Crossroads and Crash Landings
by Dotskip317
Summary: Mercenaries are bad news, but when your sister IS one you look at it differently. Stork and Piper explore their feelings and my OC does dirty business 'til the balance blows up in her face. The Storm Hawks have a choice: save Stork's sister or the Atmos.
1. Coming Up

Disclaimer; I do not own the Storm Hawks, I am simply taking them for a joy ride. Here's to hoping I can return them without any major injuries or emotional trauma. My apologies to anyone who doesn't share my views, but seriously, get over yourselves! Alright, I'm done. You can read it now.

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_It's so dark in here. How long has it been? _It doesn't feel like that long; but it didn't last time either. _Pain._ It's still fuzzy, but I'll be coming up soon, that's what feeling means. Maybe it has been a while; I'm not usually this numb. _Not long now._ It's quiet down here, but it's the kind of silence that presses on you, screams to be let inside. _Or out, I'm not sure which. The dark tries to make you a part of it._

Greison!

_Who's Greison? Oh, yeah, I think that's me. _I'm floating now, up maybe, it's hard to tell. The dark is turning grey. I can feel something hard underneath me. _So I'm not falling. That's good._ Landing hurts, even when you can control it, which is almost never.

"Greison!"

Louder, clearer now. The gray turns to red and I'm staring at the back of my eyelids. I open them to the sky. It's blue. It was blue before, so maybe it wasn't so long. _You never can tell with skies. Or me. Mostly me. _I can be out of it for anywhere from a few minutes to a several days. Two weeks is my personal record, even though that's not a really good thing.

I sit up and look around. Cliff to the right, flat to the left. Just the edge of the terra. _I hope whoever pushed me didn't fall off. Someone pushed me? I don't know. Well neither do I! Then what are you asking me for? _Calm down. _What happened? _Try to remember.

Start small; _where was I?_ Ship, carrier I think. Get back the Memory stone. _Did I? _Stork has it, yes. Stork! _Bobby, Stork, Torch, where are you?!_ Think. Bobby on skimmer, Torch on wings; get out when we find it. _Someone has to say if we die._ Meet you back at base. Stork has crystal. Alarms all around us. _We're almost gone._ Outside, on boards. Someone grabs Stork. Holds him over the edge. _No! Don't let go! Don't Fall! Don't-_ I smell fear, not mine. _Angry, so angry._ Sword flash. And I'm gone.

That must be when I went under. I didn't smell death. Stork must be fine. I'll have to find him so he doesn't still worry. He does that a lot. I don't want to be an outstanding cause. I do a limb check. _Tail?_ Check. _Spines?_ Check. _Legs? _Check and double check. _Wings?_ Wait, I don't have wings; that's Torch. _Arms?_ Check and- _hmm… interesting._ I seem to be severely lacking in the right arm department. I glance around, there being no guarantee that it's anywhere in the vicinity. Nope, no sign of it. I don't mind not having two arms. If I can make do with none on a regular basis, one shouldn't be a problem.

"Greison!"

"Grei!"

I've been walking towards the mountain where our base is for a while before I hear them again. 'Base' is just what I call the tunnels we live in. Stork says they remind him of his home terra, and they just seem right to me. They were made by these giant snakes that used to live here. Eventually they were all hunted down or relocated to Terra Ryana. I hope the survived. They gave us a home. All of us. More than we can say for our own kinds.

"Greison!"

"I though I heard her…"

"Hey look, there she is!"

"Bobby! Torch!"

Bobby scoops me up into a bear hug without realizing that I'm missing something. I would warn him but I'm laughing too hard, and there is really nothing you can do when you're having the air squeezed out of you by a giant blue raptor.

"Told you we'd find her!" grins Torch, zipping around like a human dragonfly. (Which I guess he is, although not technically human)

"Chill you overgrown mosquito!" I yell, still laughing. Torch and I always yell when we talk to each other. "Where's Stork?"

"I made him stay back," says Bobby, setting me down. "He told us what happened and I suggested he stay and figure out if it's possible to build you a replacement arm." _So that's why he isn't freaking out on me._ "He has the crystal; we decided to find you before we gave it back to the council."

_That makes sense._ Of course Bobby's the only one of us who has any common sense. Stork has sense, but there's nothing common about it, and he's kind of paranoid sometimes. Torch and I don't have any sense at all.

"He really just didn't want Stork to see your crushed and mangled remains if you didn't survive the fall!" Torch can always see the downside of any and everything, but unlike Stork, he always seems really happy about it. "that would have really freaked him out!!" _I rest my case._

"I fell?"

"Wow, you must have been really out of it."

"I always am!"

As we walk back to base the boys tell me what they were up to before Stork "so rudely interrupted with the news of your most probable demise". (Torch, can you tell?) Bobby had figured out how to keep baking soda and vinegar from exploding when you mixed them, and Torch had somehow managed to shatter his ultra-super-heavy-duty blast proof bomb testing station. I'm glad they're convinced to use their insane brilliance for good, because Stork and I would have one heck of a time trying to fend them off.

_And here he comes now._

"Grei!"

"Hiya Stork!"

He gives me a quick hug and I wonder for a second if it's really him. I'm bleeding all over the place. He's holding a metal arm in his hands and it jerks slightly when it touches me. It must run on Edrenalyn; like our hover boards and my skimmer does.

"Come on Grei," Stork says, grabbing my left hand, "we have to get your shoulder clean before some germ infects it and you die a slow and excruciatingly painful death! I already thought you died once two days ago!" _Panicky yet theatrical._

Laughing, I let him pull me inside.

_Yep, definitely Stork._

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Please tell me what you think (read my bio too.)


	2. The Offer

Disclaimer; I do not own the Storm Hawks, I am simply taking them for a joy ride. Here's to hoping I can return them without any major injuries or emotional trauma. My apologies to anyone who doesn't share my views, but seriously, get over yourselves! Alright, I'm done. You can read it now.

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I guess I didn't really believe her when she said she wanted to be a mercenary. Just a simple what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up question; and seriously, how many ten year olds would say something like that? I didn't laugh of course. She never laughed when I talked about being a pilot, and I could at least return the favor. Ever since I left home four years ago, two then, she's been there for me. _Bobby and Torch have too, but Greison most of all._

We build things together, she taught me how to hover board, and I taught her how to dodge Torch's random firearm barrages. She doesn't mind that I'm strange, and says being extra careful is part of what makes me 'so amazingly awesome'. That's just how she talks. She is so full of random anecdotes and she can find laughter and irony in almost anything. _My polar opposite, and I love her for it._ She's not related to me, but she's all the sister I need.

I was going into town to take my pilot's license test when she came falling out of the sky.

_She loves that board so much, but she just can't seem to stay on it!_

"Hey Stork! Going to get your flying degree?"

"Yep."

"You gonna get an 'A'?"

"That's pretty much impossible-"

"Why's that?" she said picking herself up out of the dirt.

"It takes a 70 to pass, and only about three people in the entire class do!"

"What'll happen if you get 100?"

"The rest of the class will shoot me."

Grei obviously found that hilarious, because she started laughing her head off and fell over backwards.

"Then aim to be shot!!" she yelled over her shoulder as she zoomed of in the other direction. _Yeah, she's crazy,_ but she made me forget what I was so worried about and I got a 95 on the test. She makes sure her insanity counts for something. _She always has._

_But a mercenary._

When I realized she was serious I still wasn't that worried. I worry about a lot of things, but never Grei. She can take care of herself, as she's proven time and again. _Besides,_ I thought, _what are the odds of anyone ever hiring her?_ Now I know; apparently they're very good.

There is a high council on the terra where we all live, Terra Scilar. All the villages report to the council, which conducts court and passes laws and other government-type things like that. They hold trials using something called the Memory Stone. It can recall and project any memory of any living thing. It makes a powerful interrogation tool, and I assume that's why Cyclonia wanted it.

The council found out about Greison wanting to be a mercenary, and said that they would spread the word if she got the Memory Stone back. Grei, _eager as always,_ accepted their offer; and lost her arm. She didn't want us to come with her, but we insisted; _well, I did anyhow._ She's always been a little crazier after that. The council kept their promise and Grei has since been hired by every major superpower in the Atmos at least once.

_Always herself, _Greison never lets anyone know who she is. When I asked her why, she said she was trying to remain anonymous to protect us, her 'boys', from anyone seeking revenge on her. I'm inclined to believe that she's right, as Grei has never failed to pilfer some sort of map or blueprint off her employer. She stores them back here in the tunnels and says I can use and lend them as I see fit - as long as I don't let Torch mess with them. She figured he would probably blow them up.

_At least, she used to._

_Greison, where are you?_ She was supposed to be back two months ago. She told me not to worry; says I do just enough of that already, and that she doesn't want to send me over the edge of my sanity. _That wouldn't be good. But what about her sanity?_ She doesn't have much to speak of really. What if she went completely berserk and can't come back out? I can't stay on this terra forever. _I have to fly,_ and Grei knows that.

I met a Sky Knight yesterday. _He didn't seem old enough, just my age;_ said his name was Aerrow. He had some sort of dog-rabbit-weasel thing with him.

He said he had heard I was the best carrier pilot in the Atmos. _I suspect Grei had something to do with that._

He said he was forming a new Storm Hawks squadron, and that they _(I assume the rest of his team)_ wanted me to join them. I kind of avoided answering; said I'd think about it.

_What if I said yes? I would love to. _Yeah, I'm paranoid, but this id everything I've ever wanted to do. Aerrow said he had found the original Storm Hawks carrier. I wish I could see _that_. Greison has the original blueprints; she has always wanted to see the real thing. _Maybe I should do it._ Say yes._ Grei would want me to._

_Who would help her modify her arm? Who would spring booby traps on Torch? Who would remind her that her insanity isn't a bad thing? Who would remind me that my paranoia isn't either?_ But she'd want me to go.

I'll wait two more days. That's how long I have until Aerrow's offer goes up in smoke. She might be back by then. I know I'll go anyway, but it would be nice to get an all clear straight from the source.

Bobby and Torch agree that I should do it. They know how much this means to me, and they don't mind me leaving. _Getting ditched is so much easier if the ditcher asks permission first._

Hopefully whoever else this guy is with doesn't have a problem with theatrical worrying. Or freaks of nature. I might see Grei again, and she's a regular freak magnet. _I hold myself as proof of that._

_I better take the blueprints with me._

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Once again, tell me what you think. It's pretty much one-sided, but it's a set up, I swear!


	3. A Good Thing

"_Freak!"_

_The small, gray-skinned girl was drawing her mountain when she heard him. She stopped, sighed, and turned to face her half brother. A foot taller than her and gaining, but in brawn, not brain matter. He never learned his lesson. She set down her sketch book, walked over to him, and proceeded to kick his butt in every way possible._

"_Tell dad I said hi; I'm not coming home." She called over her shoulder as she calmly walked to her hover board and flew off._

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"Interesting, seems you were always a tough one." Master Cyclonis smiled and chuckled softly.

"And your end of the deal?"

"Fine," said the purple cloaked figure, still holding the Memory Stone. "Terra Scilar will no be attacked by any under my command. I must warn you though, this does not in any way apply to Repton, or any others who might want to crush your petty little terra."

"I know; I never expected that promise from you."

Cyclonis sneered slightly, covering her surprise. All the mercenaries she hired showed some amount of fear when they were around her. She was the leader of Cyclonia, all but the chronically stupid trembled before her _(and even some of those)_; but nothing seemed to faze this one. It was like looking at a mask; except for periodic amusement, no emotions showed through. "If I require your services again?"

"You know where to find me. Whether I accept or not depends on my current employer."

The girl turned and walked out of the main chamber, heading for the hanger and her all black skimmer. It matched her helmet and jacket perfectly, and kept her origins a mystery.

_This, was a good thing._

Master Cyclonis liked that about her, the intrigue kept them on professional terms, even though she now relied on this, _thing_ for all her non-lethal errands. _It's starting to make Dark Ace jealous._ She never returned until her mission was complete, and although some of the more confidential papers under Cyclonian possession had gone missing, the speed and quality of her work more than made up for these minor glitches.

_This, was a very good thing._

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I know this one's short, I'll add more later, I have the idea already, but I would like some feedback. Thanks!


	4. Slight Confession

"Piper?"

_Should I go for it? Maybe start small, a compliment. While she's distracted. So she can ignore it if I'm too awkward. Or if it comes out wrong. Now, while you have her by herself._

"What's up Stork?"

"Um…I-"

Finn and Junko burst through the doors, tripping over themselves and laughing like maniacs. Well, Finn is laughing, Junko's just grinning sheepishly. They remind me so much of Torch and Bobby when they do that. _I guess they really might be my friends._

"Hey Stork!" Finn hollers, brandishing a piece of paper over his head, "Why didn't you tell us that you have a girlfriend?!"

_Or not._

It's bad enough that Piper is right there; I can feel her eyes boring into the back of my skull; but Aerrow and Radarr walk in just in time to hear Finn's outburst. _Bad, bad, bad. _If I were Greison I would just turn around and give them all a death stare that would melt their faces off. As it is, my hands and feet have been welded in place and I have lost all ability to speak.

"You have a girlfriend?" Aerrow asks, surprise evident in his voice.

_Oh, there's my mouth._

"No."

"Not according to this!" says Finn gleefully, paper held high. I recognize my own handwriting. _Oh no. Not that._

"Where did you get that?" I can hear the prickles in my own voice.

Now Junko speaks up, still sheepish; "We found it in your room. The skortchball went in there and knocked it over. Sorry." At least he apologized. It was probably Finn's idea to read it anyway, and to confront me with it. _Junko wouldn't do that._ I can't help but be mad at him though.

"I don't-"

"Ahem!" Finn clears his throat, cutting me off. "_Dear Grei,_" _I wonder which one it is._ "_I'm probably crazy to write letters that I know will never be mailed,_" _oh, that one._ "_Especially to someone who I don't even know is still alive. But insanity has never really been an issue with you, now has it._"

His smile is gone now, _didn't he read this first? _But he keeps going, stubborn as ever. "_I've been thinking about you a lot lately; not in a miss-you kind of way though, more of an I-see-you-everywhere kind of way. When Finn does something stupid I think of how you fall off your hover board at least four thousand times a day. And when Aerrow pulls some crazy stunt for no reason except for the rush it reminds me so much of you I almost start laughing. Almost. Like we used to. Piper's smile and Junko's metal collection and Finn's air headedness and Aerrow's high-octane energy drive. I can almost imagine you crash landing on the runway and each of them instantly knowing who you are. That's just the kind of thing that happens when I'm around you. Paranoid, inventively, stubbornly yours; Stork._"

They're quiet, and I can hear the Condor's engines thrumming away behind and beneath us. Finn definitely didn't read it first. It could have been a letter to my great aunt for all he knew. _And here comes the question._ They're all thinking it, they don't even have to ask, but Aerrow's the one who lets it fly.

"Um, Stork? Who's Grei?"

And there it is, out in the open. All eyes are on me, I can feel them. I wonder what would happen if I just didn't answer. But I have to. _What do I say? How can I possibly explain all she ever was to me in the fewest words possible? _Words aren't good to me.

"She was my non-sister." _Non-sister?_ That's sounds even more pathetic than I expected it to.

"You're what?!"

"She was my sister, but we weren't related, so she was my non-sister." So that's what I meant. _I must be really stupid today._

"You have sister?" Piper asks quietly. I can feel her hurt, and it cuts me deeper than anything she could have yelled. I want to curl up and die even more than I usually do when I'm around her. I'm still cemented in place though.

"I used to. I'm not sure what happened to her; I haven't seen her in over six years."

"Then why do you still write to her?" asks Junko, confused. _This must be way over his head._ Ill have to think about that one, it's over my head too. I still have all six years worth of letters to her. She can't read them, she can't write back; but it helps me keep this side of crazy. This side of the darkness that she sometimes slips into. _I can't tell them that._

"She helps me think." _Score two for stupid. _Lucky for me I say it so quietly I'm not sure if they hear it or not._ I hope not._

Finn pesters me with questions for the rest of the journey, none of which I answer. We're headed for some terra near Scilar for some sort of all-purpose tournament. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I'll bet Greison would love it. Maybe I should tell them that, but I don't.

With the Condor in its hammock and the rest of the team on their way down to the camp, Piper gives me one last look. I can't tell what she's thinking, but she seems pensive, almost confused. _I wish I could tell her everything._ Pour my heart out to her and explain why I act so strangely about everything. _But I can't. Especially not now. _Now that she knows part of the story, I wish I could tell her the rest.

I look off to the west._ If it weren't for the clouds you could see the mountain from here._ For a moment I wish I had a hover board with me. Then I could fly over and say hi to Bobby and Torch; if they're still there. I left, there's no reason to think that they didn't. It's been long enough.

Maybe this means its time to give over. To let her go. To focus on the present. _On Piper._ But the thought of doing something like that just makes me miss her more. _I really wish Grei was here. She'd laugh and cryptically tell me what to do. __She might know what to do about Piper._ My head hurts; this is just too confusing for one person's brain to handle. _It might make them seize up and die._ I sigh.

_I'll think about this later._

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Let me know if this is horrible. No, wait, don't do that! My disclaimer still holds, but putting it at the top broke up this already confusing story even more. Sorry._  
_


	5. Meeting Greison

Disclaimer; I do not own the Storm Hawks, I am simply taking them for a joy ride. Here's to hoping I can return them without any major injuries or emotional trauma. And an added disclaimer for this one; I do not own Collective Soul or their song "Why, Pt. 2". They rock and if you haven't listened to them you are a very deprived human being. Unless you're not human. Then you're a very deprived whatever-you-are. Done ranting. Read please.

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Stork doesn't talk about himself, so I guess I just assumed he had nothing much to say. _I kind of maybe sort of like him in a completely non-consequential sort of way._ That's what I tell myself anyhow. _He's cute._ He obviously doesn't feel for me though, if he's still writing to someone he hasn't seen for so long. I almost thought he was going to say something before Junko and Finn busted in. _I guess I was wrong._

I really shouldn't be so upset that he didn't tell me about this 'Grei' girl. _I'm not jealous!_ I should just forget about it, try to have fun. That's why we're here after all. To have some fun and cheer Aerrow on to victory.

When we com in to land I hear music. The rock kind Finn likes to listen to, but it has this overtone that I like for some reason. Aerrow goes straight to enter his races, but we have plenty of time to kill. We wander around the tents, watching mechanics working on skimmers, fighters having sparring scrimmages, and a handful of people zipping around and pulling tricks on hover boards. _I haven't ever seen so many of those things in one place._

Every once in awhile someone will recognize us and come over to talk to Aerrow. They all seem both really happy and excited or really ticked off.

Still with lots of time before the race, we start heading toward the starting line. The music has stayed constant this entire time, not the song mind you, the style, but I notice that the overtone gets louder and softer depending on where we go. It's getting louder now, and the guys start to hear it too.

"Can you hear that?"

"In the music?"

"Yeah!"

"Hey, me too!"

"It's coming from over there."

I roll my eyes and follow after them. _Boys get distracted so easily. _We trace the sound back to a one-sided tent near the racetrack. Inside is a giant blue raptor. This is so strange that none of us even thinks about drawing a weapon.

He's building something out of cogs and bolts. Beside him, sitting on a table, is this tiny kid with dragonfly wings, expertly tapping out the drum line to the current song on a piece of sheet metal.

And there is a girl, crouched down next to a jet black skimmer and too busy messing with it to notice us. She is humming along to the music and, finished with her ride, pushes the side closed and bursts out singing; her voice perfectly matching the recorded, male, one.

_**So tell me why-y-y, it don't feel the sa-ame.  
Tell me why-y-y I've got to feel this wa-ay.  
Yeah you leave,  
You're gone,  
And I'm left here with the bla-y-ame  
So tell me why-y-y  
It don't feel the same!**_

And then she notices us, watching from the sidelines.

She slams both her hands over her mouth, her eyes going wide. The boys, noticing her sudden stop, look up and, seeing us, burst out laughing.

"Looks like you've got yourself an audience, Grei!" says the blue raptor, chuckling.

"Sorry you had to hear her croaking;" the dragonfly kid giggles "you're probably scarred for life!"

"Shut up Torch!!" Grei yells, heaving a wrench at his head, which he nimbly dodges, and still laughing, flies out of the tent. The raptor shakes his head, smiling, and goes back to whatever it is he's working on.

"Your name is Grei?" Finn asks incredulously, one eyebrow raised.

"Yep!" says the girl, smiling and coming around to our side of her skimmer. "The one and only!" she only comes up to my chin, barely that, and is dressed in an outfit all in shades of gray, a wide black belt wound twice around her waist and fastened by a metal 'X' to one side. the same 'X' is emblazoned on her right shoulder.

Her white hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, but most of her bangs have escaped and fall in her face, bright blue-green eyes shining through. Except for the gray skin she could be human. And she has two rings through her left ear.

_Just like Stork does._

"Do you know-" I start off tentatively, getting cut off as a foghorn sounds. _Lots of interruptions today._

"Sorry," she says, grabbing a board off the wall and backing towards one of the openings, "that's the warning for the hover board fieldings. This here blue lizard is Bobby, and he should be able to answer you questions about…" she pauses in mid-gesture toward the raptor to think, "pretty much anything!" Grei grins as she turns and sprints out of the tent, leaving a group of very confused Storm Hawks and one exasperated lizard in her wake.

Bobby sighs, "Well as I hope you have gathered from her ranting, I'm Bobby, she's Greison, and the hyperactive flying midget is Torch." He gets up from the stool where he's been working. Standing, he towers over all of us, even Junko. "You must be the Storm Hawks."

"I see our reputation has preceded us!" Aerrow says happily, shaking Bobby's giant hand and causing me to roll my eyes. _I'll bet he's just always wanted to say that._

"Yes…" he says, smiling slightly, "but the bird on your shoulder is really what gave it away." Aerrow's face darkens to match his hair as he realizes that our symbol is painted in bright blue on his armor. I laugh _(hey, it's funny!)_ and it earns me a dirty look from the rest of my team.

Just to get their eyes off me I take another shot at my question. "Do you know someone named Stork?" Surprise and a small amount of wariness dart across his huge face. _I must be onto something._

"Maybe, why?"

I breathe deeply and launch into a frantic string of reasoning: "Well, our pilot's name is Stork and he's been writing letters that he never mails to some one called 'Grei' and I was wondering if maybe his Grei was your Greison because from what little I know they sound a lot alike and I thought maybe you knew him and…" I let myself trail off. Bobby is laughing so hard he can barely stand.

"Yep," he says, gasping for breath, "that sounds like our Stork! I can't wait to tell Greison; it'll make her year!!"

"Then let's tell her!" Junko says excitedly. _I'm not sure if he's really following this, but making people happy is something he definitely understands_.

"Nah, I'll tell her after the hover board run. She can wait that long. Where is Stork anyway?"

As Aerrow explains how Stork never leaves the ship if at all possible I glace around their tent. _This place is a mess! _Gadgets, tools and spare parts lie all over the workbenches. But it's an organized mess, and at second glance I can see that there is a certain order to everything. If Stork spent a lot of time around these guys it would explain why I can never find anything in his stacks of blueprints, chart, maps, and various other papers and junk. _And speaking of blueprints…_

"Are these the specs for the Condor?"

Bobby glances over to the wall where I'm pointing. "No, that's just a copy Grei made of them. Pretty good, huh? That's the kind of thing she does when she finds herself able to sit still. Drawings and numbers." He's smiling again. "Words aren't good to her."

That sounds familiar, but before I can place it Stork radios in.

"You guys? Hello?" his voice crackles over the airways.

"Yeah? What's up Stork?"

"Um…I thought I saw an explosion down there…" Bobby rolls his eyes and mouths 'Torch' in my direction. "…I wanted to make sure you weren't…dead,…so…" his voice trails off awkwardly. _So that's what it reminded me of._

"We're all fine Stork."

Suddenly Finn has an idea and grabs the mouthpiece out of Aerrow's hand. "Hey Stork! We have some one we want you to meet!"

A sigh. "I know you think I'm crazy but I don't need to see anyone." _Poor guy._ He just had one of his most personal secrets forcefully ripped out of him and now he thinks his friend are trying to send him to a psychiatrist. _This must be turning into a really bad day for him._

But Finn's laughing. "No! She's not a shrink, she's an actual person!" he almost yells when he says "her name is Grei!"

His gleeful outburst is met with silence. And then a choked "…that's not funny Finn…" comes over the line. I can hear the tears in his words and when I look up from the receiver I see that Aerrow and Bobby can hear them too. All Finn knows is that his good news isn't being celebrated, and he stares at the mouthpiece in confusion. He makes as if to speak again, but I pry the mike away from him before he can.

"Stork? It's Piper, Finn's telling the truth, as hard as that is to believe." Finn glares at me, but I ignore him. _This is too important. _"I'm coming back to get you. You need to see her." The speaker is silent for a little longer, _did the signal go dead?_ And then I hear a small "okay" from the other end.

I almost hang up but I hear him again just before I do.

"Hey Piper? You still there?"

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I can't meet you in the hanger."

"Why not?"

"I locked myself on the roof." And the feed cuts out, ending our conversation.

_The ROOF?!?_

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Please R&R! You're not getting anything else out of me until I get at least three more reviews!! And ALL HAIL _COLLECTIVE SOUL_!!!


	6. The Qualities of Silence

Just to reinstate it for those of you who forgot during my forced break in posting I do not own the Storm Hawks, Collective Soul rocks and, oh yeah, _review this you FOOL!! _Now read it already!!!

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The roof was the only place I could think of going. Everywhere else was too close to the rest of the team. Even though they weren't actually there, the entire inside of the Condor radiates their presence. So I grabbed the spare two-way radio and sat on the roof. No armor, no precautions, no thinking. I just did it. _I'm not acting like myself today._

Some of the sounds from the tents and the racetrack drift up, but I mostly focus on the silence underneath it. Merbs are generally good at this to start with, but living on a carrier with four other people and a…whatever Radarr is, has made me an expert. Its one of those things I taught Greison before she started being gone all the time. We used to just sit and listen to it; I still do. _I wonder if I can teach Piper to do that._

_Forget it. She probably hates me for not telling her about Grei._

I feel so stupid. I should have just told them the truth when they asked what I was doing in my room all the time instead of making excuses. It's so dumb, but they took them anyway. They trust me everyday not to fly them straight to the Cyclonians and not to expose them to some infectious, deadly disease. _Alright, so maybe that last one is less about trust than about them just not thinking about it, but still. _I should have at least trusted them with Grei. Then if they ran into her on a mission they would at least know not to kill her. _All this time and we never did._ The odds are against us. _Us who?_

_Wait, they still don't know not to kill her._ I'll tell them when they get back. If Aerrow wins they'll all be in a better mood, more likely to listen. _I hope he wins._

It's really not my place to tell them though, she is a mercenary after all, and her real self is supposed to be a secret. _And I don't even know her true self anymore!_ She might be killing people consciously now. Not being able to control herself sometimes might have made her permanently berserk. Or she might have joined Cyclonis! Or Repton! Or the Murk Raiders! Okay, maybe not them. _Six years is so long._ I might not even recognize her.

Greison might have shot up like a weed, _she would like that._ Her speaking and singing voices could have gone up or down. Bobby kept telling her that they would both go up, and Torch swore that they would both go down. None of us knew for sure. We had no idea what her non-human half is, so there's really no telling. I wonder if she's found out yet. I kind of hope she still has that tenor-bass hookup in her singing that I was always so jealous of. _For someone who cares so much about voice she likes silence an awful lot._

_Sigh. Silence._ We used to talk about it all the time growing up. Whenever anyone, usually Torch, would ask what we were doing, Grei would tell them that we were "discussing the qualities of silence". _For a girl who words hate as much as words do her she sure knows a lot of big ones._

Grei talks about silence like it's a tangible thing. She calls it the undertow, because it can pull you out and down into itself,_ just like a riptide._

But if you pay attention when she talks about it and then listen to the silence, it breathes._ Like it's so many people, all different. Because there's soft silence and hard silence and long silence and staccato silence and oppressive silence and open silence and awkward silence and thinking silence and empty silence and overflowing silence and heavy silence and light silence and dark silence and dead silence and live silence and silence that screams on your ear drums and silence that is just that. Silence._

I am just sitting here on the roof when an explosion shatters the undertow, jerking me back to reality. It's really not that loud, but because you have to listen through everything else to hear silence, anything sudden or unnatural sounds humongous. And dangerous. _Piper!_

I snatch up the mouthpiece and carefully peer over the edge of the roof towards the camp. A small cloud of smoke is just clearing. "You guys? Hello?"

"Yeah? What's up Stork?"

"Um…" _Crud._ There is no way they'll believe me if I tell them I heard something from a good half-to-a-mile away. "I thought I saw an explosion down there…I wanted to make sure you weren't…dead,…so…" _oh joy._ At least I was able to incorporate some sense of normalcy into that sentence. _And the score's 3-0, stupidity's favor._

"We're all fine Stork."

"Hey Stork!" _Wonderful, it's Finn._ "We have someone we want you to meet!" _If Finn's happy, 9 times out of 10 it means I'm not going to be._ I sigh.

"I know you think I'm crazy but I don't need to see anyone." I'm really not in the mood to make a psychiatrist commit suicide today. _I'd tell them that, but straitjackets are worse._

Finn's laughing now and I hear Junko's giggle and someone else's low chuckle in the background. For a moment I let myself believe its Bobby, but its probably just Junko's voice changing.

"No! She's not a shrink, she's an actual person!" the receiver rings out, "her name is Grei!"

Blackness closes in around the edges of my vision. My insides spin away into the darkness somewhere and tears fill up the space they leave behind. I could have handled taunts, jokes, cracks, anger, and spite. _Why Finn? Why did you have to pull the one stunt that would send me over the edge? Into this place of dark and hurt and longing that I've been just barely avoiding for so long. _I let the tears out before they can choke me to death. _They're silver. I forgot._

"That's not funny Finn."

Laying my head in my arms I concentrate on breathing. I almost don't notice when Piper's voice floats over the radio. _Hers is soft._

"Stork? It's Piper, Finn's telling the truth, as hard as that is to believe." For some reason that makes me smile. "I'm coming back to get you. You need to see her." _You have no idea._ It takes picking up the radio and getting almost back to the hatch before I am calm enough to answer.

"Okay." I try the handle, groan, and pick up the mouthpiece again. "Hey Piper? You still there?"

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I can't meet you in the hanger."

"Why not?"

"I locked myself on the roof." And the feed cuts out, before she can respond, which is really a good thing. There is no way in Atmos I am explaining to the girl of my dreams what a paranoid nut job like me is doing locked out on the roof of the carrier that I'm afraid to leave with a two-way radio and no way back inside. Piper already thinks I'm crazy. _I don't blame her either; she's already right._

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I could say that finding Stork on the roof of the Condor is the strangest thing that has happened to me so far today, but the really weird thing about it is how not freaked out he is. Anything that could possibly infect or injure or 'doom' anyone sends him into cringe mode, but there he is, standing a good mile off the ground and calm as can be.

_He might have been crying; his eyes seem brighter than usual._

By the time we are back over the tents he's more back to his normal self; twitching at every sudden noise and with a death grip on my scooter. I could just be dragging him out to watch one of Aerrow's races. I see a flash of white over at the hover board feildings, and I know Stork does too. He doesn't take his eyes off that spot until we touch down.

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Thank you, _thank you, THANK YOU!!!_ to the three people who actually reviewed this story, you know who you are and if you don't I would suggest counseling. I've learned my lesson. Now I'm not demanding any reviews but I DO reserve the right to withhold future chapters from you if you don't give me any of your own accord. (Dotskip laughs manically at the cowering readers)


	7. Reunion

I do not own the Storm Hawks. Read please._  
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_I expected tears, I expected laughter. I expected an awkward silence and I expected incessant chatter. I expected hugs and I expected flinching. I did not, however, expect Grei to see Stork, yell his name, and tackle him. And I really did not expect Stork to be okay with that._

"Storkstorkstorkstorkstork!!!"

"Don't kill him Grei! That's Torch's job!!"

"Stork!"

"Hey Torch! Did you shrink?" Torch fires a shot at Stork's head, who ducks and is swept into a bear hug by Bobby, Grei bouncing around his heels.

"Hi Bobby! You're big."

"Gee, I didn't think you would notice!"

Grei smiles at him. "Did you miss us?"

"Nope, not at all!" says Stork, grinning. He started laughing the moment Greison first called his name, and I realize that this is the first time I've ever heard him laugh. I mean really _truly_ laugh, just because he's happy; not that nervous chuckle we usually get.

"Liar!!" Torch yells, zipping around wildly.

When they've all calmed down some Stork turns back to us. "Well, because none of you are shooting at each other I find it safe to assume that you've met." _That sounds more like Stork._ I think all the yelling kind of freaked Piper out.

"We have, but I'm not sure you actually know our names."

Bobby thinks on this for a moment while Grei chases Torch around his legs. "I think I've gathered most of them from talking to you, but I don't think these idiots have." He gestures towards Torch and Grei, the former of which stops to glare at him.

"I am not an idiot!"

"Oh yes you are Torch!" Greison laughs, lunging at him and missing by a mile. "And you're right, I have no idea!"

Stork smiles. "Then I believe introductions are in order. Aerrow, if you would."

"This is Junko, Finn, and Piper. I'm Aerrow." I say, pointing out each of us in turn. Radarr pops up over my shoulder. "And this is Radarr." That gets Grei's attention.

"Hello Radarr. What are you?" she addresses him directly. Surprised, he chatters at her at an alarming rate. I expect confusion, but instead she nods. "Yeah, I have no idea what I am either. Torch is an accident and Bobby is a freak of nature." This earns her two smacks upside the head from the boys. More chattering. "Stork is a Merb and I just told you I have don't know what else I am."

Piper holds up her hands. "Wait, you actually understand him?"

"Um, yeah. Can't you?"

Stork looks at her. "Told you so." She sticks her tongue out at him.

Junko and Torch have been eyeing each other warily from their respective sides of Bobby. _He makes a good wall._ At Greison's words Junko looks at them both oddly. "What does she mean by that?"

Torch lights on the ground. This is the first time any of us see him standing, and he only just comes up to my knee.

"My parents were scientists and something in their lab exploded when I was in it. When they realized that I wasn't going to grow anymore or lose the wings they dumped me on Terra Scilar hoping something would eat me." he smiles. "But Grei and Bobby found me before anything did!"

"What about you?" Finn asks. Bobby stares down at him.

"I'm blue. What do you think?"

"Oh, um, yeah, heh, right."

Greison, Torch, and Piper all laugh at Finn's mistake. I've been wondering something during all this, but they all seem so darn happy I'm not sure if I should bring it up; _it would make everything so awkward. _Radarr stares me down, boring into my thoughts until I have to ask, _just like back on the Condor when we found out about Grei._

"How did you meet Stork?"

They all stop laughing. Torch sets down on Bobby's shoulder and Grei turns to Stork, concern in her eyes. Everyone watches him for some sort of sign. He opens his mouth to speak, and closes it again, thinking. A foghorn sounds, starling us all.

"That's the warning for the skimmers' all-race," Bobby notes, relief tinting his words, "you better get over there before you're disqualified."

As we walk towards the starting line Piper confronts me. "Why did you have to go and ask that?! He would have told us in his own time! Haven't you noticed how un-Storkish he's been acting?!"

_She's so cute when she's angry._ I'd tell her that just because it flusters her so much, but she does have a point. I've never seen Stork so relaxed, especially outside of the Condor._ Usually he's jumping all over the place at any danger, real or imagined._ Heading back through the tent encampment he gets some of his jitters back. Its a few minutes before I figure out why. Grei wasn't the only one to notice him.

"Hey look! Isn't that Stork?"

"The Magic Merb Mechanic?"

"Yeah! With the Storm Hawks!"

"But I thought that was just a rumor?!"

"Apparently not!"

"It's the Fourth Freak!"

"The Freaks of Wrath are whole again!"

The whispers ripple through the tents and crowds in our wake. _This is too weird. Freaks of Wrath?_ Right on time, Greison pops up between me and Piper.

"Because someone is going to call us it eventually, you might as well know that around here we're known as the Freaks of Wrath. I'm not exactly sure who started it, but we don't generally mind. It's really not that far off-mark." She starts to turn away but remembers something. "And before I forget, if people start to get mad at you for hanging around us, it's perfectly alright to stare them down. It's more a sport for us than anything else." She does a back flip and runs to catch up with Torch.

Sitting on my skimmer, Radarr in his side carriage, I glace back at my team on the sidelines. They stand side by side with Stork in the middle, bridging the gap. _Somehow they all seem to fit together._ Bringing my eyes to the front again my earlier question resurfaces in my mind. I'll have time for that later, right now, I race.

"On your marks!"

The skimmers' engines rumble in anticipation. The crowd goes quiet.

"Get set!"

The heat rises as I watch the track in front of me.

"Go!"

Dust swirls and any other concepts are driven from my head by the thought of winning.

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In case you didn't get it last chapter I'm tired of waiting on y'all so I'm just going to start posting whenever. Review this anyway!


	8. Explation and a Mission

This is a little bit off, but I like it and it serves my purpose so you'll just have to deal with my insanity for another chapter before stuff actually starts happening again. I do not own the Storm Hawks. Read on.

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When Aerrow comes in for his landing he's a good four seconds ahead of everyone else; so it's really no surprise that he wins; _but getting shot down from behind and crashing over the finish line is pretty ridiculous, even for him._ The guy in second who shot at him is disqualified, so the third and fourth place riders end up coming in second and third, and they seem happy enough about that. Aerrow's ride is totaled though.

"Dude! That was awesome!"

"Thanks Finn. Hey Stork, any chance you could get this thing flying again?" Aerrow's first thought is of his skimmer, _as always._

Stork and Grei are kneeling by the twisted wreck. "No." Grei glares at him. "Fine, there's a slim chance. Maybe." His last word is pointed and directed at her.

Bobby and Junko lug its remains to their tent since we don't have one of our own and there is no way we can get it up to the Condor on our skimmers. Stork sets to work right away and within minutes Aerrow's ride is starting to resemble something that you're actually supposed to, well, ride! Greison stays on hand, helping whenever she can and watching everything he's doing as closely as possible. Me and Junko would probably go do something else, we don't really get this anyhow, but Junko seems absolutely enthralled with Torch's wings. _Besides, the mysterious Stork might finally tell us how he met these freaks in the first place._

Piper stands to one side, alternately watching Stork reconstruct Aerrow's skimmer and glaring at Grei. _I think she has some sort of crush on Stork, which is really awkward because he's scared to death of her. They all think I'm dumb, but I notice things, even though I sometimes overlook the obvious._

Stork glances up and notices that we're all staring at him. He sighs, rolls his eyes, and stands up to speak.

"I assume you guys aren't going to stop watching me until I tell you how these guys and I met." Stunned, we all nod in unison. He shakes his head, "I was afraid of that," Stork crouches back down and leans back on his oddly shaped feet, hands on the skimmer's seat "but I might as well tell you."

"When I was about five I started sneaking out of the caves of my home terra to build things and watch the clouds. By the time I was seven the Elder Council had noticed this and deemed me an 'unnatural'. They gave me the choice of going through reform or leaving the terra. I chose to leave. I was left on Terra Scilar where I met Bobby, Torch and Grei. I lived there until Aerrow came and invited me to join the Storm Hawks." He looks around at us. "Any questions? Comments? Concerns?"

Aerrow seems confused. "Didn't they give a reason you had to leave? They couldn't have just kicked a seven year old off their terra!"

"Actually yes, they could have, but they did give me one;" Stork shrugs "I have sky fever." He looks out at the blueness above our heads, a faraway look in his yellow eyes, he barely murmurs "That's one sickness I don't mind having…"

"Didn't your family try and get them to let you stay?" Junko asks snapping him back to reality.

"My genetic family is dead, and I daresay my foster parents were glad to be rid of me."

We're all quiet for a while and Stork goes back to working on Aerrow's skimmer. As he gets closer and closer to fixing it completely a frown forms and deepens on his face. He shuts the side with a bang, making Radarr fall off my shoulder. Still frowning he reaches forward and turns the handle to rev the engine. Nothing happens.

"Stork? Is something wrong?"

"No! Well, yes, but there shouldn't be! The engine is fine, so is the rest of it, and there's fuel crystals in the hold! By all right it should be running like a dream! All I can think is that your crystal converters must be shot, and the only way to test that is-" he grits his teeth "Aerrow, will you risk your ride to let me try to fix it?"

"Um, well yeah! But what-?"

Stork sets his jaw. "Grei, if you would."

Grei raises her eyebrows and steps forward to put her hands on the skimmer's engine, lacing her fingers into its grooves. "You sure about this?" Stark gives a curt nod.

"You guys! What are you talking about?!"

Greison squeezes her eyes shut as sparks of green light flash down her arms; both metal and skin, and into Aerrow's ride. It roars to life, green electricity dancing over the skimmer's armor. She jerks back suddenly. We all stare at her in disbelief as she turns back to Stork.

"You're right, the engine's fine. The converters are too but there's something blocking the connection tubes."

Stork quickly disconnects the pipes and sure enough out falls dirt, dust, rocks, and clods of grease-soaked mud form Aerrow's crash landing. He reattaches the tubes and turns the handle again, this time causing the skimmer to sputter, and then purr like even I know it's supposed too. Aerrow laughs out loud and Junko, Bobby, Torch and I cheer. "How did you DO that?!"

Grei looks sideways at Stork for permission, _we are his friends after all, _and gets a sarcastic eye roll and a shrug in response. She has this crazy half-grin on her face and her eyes shine green with the fire that danced across the skimmer's engine just moments ago.

"I can convert my body's energy into electricity and as long as I'm in contact with it I can power anything with moving parts. Basically, I run on and create Edrenalyn instead of…whatever it is that you guys run on."

"Adrenaline?"

"Edrenalyn; the single most powerful free energy in the universe. And it sometimes makes people act really insanely happy and punch-drunk, like they're on a speed-rush-high." _Well that explains why Stork's been acting so weird._ "In small amounts it also speeds up the cell regeneration process."

"But that's impossible!!!" Piper cuts in, startling us all._ I almost forgot she was standing there._ "That much pure energy would overload the central system of any living thing!!"

Greison shrugs, still looking positively insane. "Not mine! I'm guessing not whatever my mom was either. And you're right, it would kill me, but I manage to run around and get hurt enough to stabilize myself. Besides, only my electricity output is pure Edrenalyn; my blood is only about 90."

"Wow." I say before I can stop myself "You really are a freak!"

This would, in theory, create a very awkward silence, but Grei just laughs and agrees with me, blue returning to her gaze. _It's the little things that count._

A radio on her belt that I didn't notice before starts buzzing and spitting out random garbage. She glances at it, a shadow flickering across her face.

"I've got to take this, and I might not be back for a while. It was great meeting you guys though!" she calls over her shoulder as she jumps onto that weird black skimmer she was working on earlier. "Bye Stork! See you later you idiots!" Torch sticks his tongue out at Grei as she guns the engine and takes off for Terra Scilar.

"What was that about?" Aerrow asks. He's watching her receding form. Bobby is too. "Cyclonians."

"Well then we should help her!"

Bobby almost smiles as he answers. "No, she can handle it."

_I wonder what that's about._ Turning back to the tent I look over just in time to notice how close together Piper and Stork are standing. His hand almost brushes hers. I feel myself smirk as he notices how near she is and scoots back to the blueprints on the far wall. _Yep. It's the little things that count._

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The black helmeted figure steps into the clearing. "This had better be important."

Coming forward from the shadows the Dark Ace glowers at her. "It is. Master Cyclonis has a new assignment for you. You are to steal the blueprints for this from the terradons." He tosses a scroll to her which she deftly catches and unrolls. A smile darts across her lips as she looks down at the rough sketch.

"A projection harmonizer. How quaint. I'm going to guess she wants it to humiliate her victims with their memories." He gives a curt nod, anger visibly seething just below the surface of his face.

"She needs it in conjunction with the Memory Stone. You get them or she sets the raptors to destroy your Terra Scilar."

Her face is stone once more, her visor hiding her eyes.

"Don't worry princess, I'll get them." she rides into the sky, leaving a furious Dark Ace in her wake. _One day, you'll make a mistake. And I'll be there to grind you into the dust._

A few miles south Greison pulls off her helmet and takes another look at the sketch. _Huh, don't they realize how easy these are to build? I can draw up some blues in half the time it would take me to find the terradons, not even having to convince them to draw some for me._ She banks towards the mountain's hanger, facts and figures already scuttling across her mind.

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I can't tell if this is short or not, it took me a while to write. Here is my pitiful attempt at hypnosis: review the chapter, _review the chapter, REVIEW THE CHAPTER, **REVIEW THE CHAPTER, REVIEW THE CHAPTER!!!!!**_ Did it work? Let me know in your **_REVIEW_**. Heh heh heh. Yeah.


	9. Eavesdropping

If for some reason you want to read the disclaimer and/or find out what songs I used in this one exceedingly long chapter, go to the bottom; I didn't feel like boring everybody by writing them on the top. Now here's the actual story.

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_So many traps; so little time._ I could run straight through them all and not get a scratch on me. That's how Torch and I designed them to work; only if you're a crazy spaz that can run (or fly) like the wind. I think that would freak the other out a little too much. This is all pretty weird already. _Why did I agree to show them our home? I wish I didn't know the answer; it's that I'm a pushover whenever Piper is involved._

So here we are, and I have to remember how to undo my part of the code-encrypted front door we installed so long ago. I'm not sure if I should be ultimately embarrassed or proud that Bobby, Grei and Torch figured out how to avoid them. But there is no way we could get four people who have never seen anything like this before through uninjured. _Let's see now, how did this go…_

First six switches, last one twice; left dial half turn right; red, blue, yellow, green, brown, in that order; far lever all the way down and three quarters back up; punch the 'X' and press the electric green button. _Did I get all of it?_ The blue light and lack of me falling through the floor says yes.

"Stork! How the heck did you remember all that?!"

I just look at him. _I quite honestly have no idea._ "Just lucky I guess."

Greison's Edrenalyn buzz must not have worn off quite yet. That much in such a concentration had a stronger effect on me than I though it would. Could just be an aftereffect of the re-submersion jolt.

While I stand there looking vacant Bobby enters his code and Torch enters his own. _I wonder how we'll get past Greison's lock._ It's Tuesday, so it should be dormant. _She's strange like that._ Apparently she hasn't changed that part yet, because the door slides open as soon as Torch is finished. They haven't changed much at all since I left. Same target painted on the floor, same tunnels leading off the main room and chutes carved into the walls. The chutes are what we all use to get around, but Bobby never really fit into them, so it's a good thing all the main tunnels are enormous.

I stand in the middle of the target and look up. If the sun is straight overhead it creates a spotlight right here. I imagine that I can see a speck of blue in the distance, and maybe I can. Piper comes and stands next to me, trying to see whatever it is I'm staring at. I move over slightly to make room for her. _This would be a very romantic moment if it weren't for Finn and Junko and Aerrow and Torch running all around us. Too bad really, this could have been nice._

"Dude I can't believe you actually lived here!!" Finn yells from one side of the round room.

"Hey Stork! Is this you?" Junko asks, catching Piper's attention. She walks over to him, not even noticing how close we were standing. I allow myself a small sigh before going to see what they're looking at. It's the picture of all of us we hung over the inside of the main door. It shows all of us, looking really happy, and pretty crazy at that. We're holding a silver cup above our heads, the inscription on which reads "First Place Pit Crew".

I smile, "We won that about a year before I left; the rider we were working for won first in some big event."

"He couldn't have done it without you." Bobby says, coming up behind us, "Me and Torch helped some, but it was mostly you and Grei."

"C'mon, that's not true!"

"Oh yes it is! Even Torch agrees on that." Torch stops zipping around long enough to shout an agreement, then flies off. _Probably to his explosives workshop._

I roll my eyes. _He seems to be able to find the most dangerous things to occupy his time. _We follow Bobby into the kitchen. We call the conversion point for all the tunnels the 'main room', but when I lived here our lives pretty much orbited around the kitchen. That's where we went whenever we needed to find someone. _Even if you wanted to be alone you could be in there. It was never quiet, but always safe._

_Not usually how I would describe somewhere with knives and fire and heavy pans hanging from the ceiling like medieval torture devices; but in this case yes, I do in fact consider it safe._ Mostly because that's where Bobby was almost all the time. That big lizard gives off comfort the same way Greison radiates that insane happiness of hers. _Irrevocably and uncontrollably._

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When Stork said he lived in a mountain I was expecting some sort of house built onto the side of one, not the actual inside of a mountain!

He seems distracted once we get inside; he goes to the center of the first room and stares straight up. I go to try to see whatever he's looking at and end up in closer purposeful proximity to him than I ever have before. _I don't think he even notices._ Looking up, I think I see a speck of sky, but it could just be my imagination.

"Hey Stork! Is this you?"

Junko yells at him and he stiffens slightly. _This I have to see. _Turning and walking to Junko I hear him sigh, but it's probably just my wishful thinking.

Junko's pointing to a picture on the back of the door we just came through. Stork, Bobby, Torch, and Grei are in it, holding up some sort of cup thing and grinning. Grei looks like she's laughing her head off. Stork looks unbelievably happy; twitchy, but happy. All four of them are covered in grease stains and have Stork's same 'X' on their fronts.

Stork and Bobby are talking now, but I'm not listening. I'm looking at Stork's smile._ He has a beautiful smile; I just wish we saw it more often. I really wish I could make him smile like Greison can._ It's not entirely under his control, but he doesn't seem to mind that. I have the opposite effect. _I think he's scared of me._

All the boys are moving to a door on the far side of the room, I follow them just barely in time. And walk into a giant kitchen.

There are pot and pans all over the place and counters along all the walls, as well as a section in the middle. The whole place gives off an air of cluttered calm, kind of an amplified form of the vibe I get from Bobby.

Stork seems all of a sudden like he's back on the Condor. _Maybe he just needs some sort of axle to his life to center himself around._ This is a kitchen though. Not exactly somewhere you'd think someone as paranoid as Stork would opt to spend a lot of time in. But I guess a sky knight squadron's carrier ship isn't either. I'm starting to see why the other Merbs thought he was an 'unnatural', as they put it. I just think it's sweet.

"Sorry about the mess, I wasn't expecting anyone today." Bobby grins sheepishly.

I notice a gigantic dictionary in on one of the corner counters. "What's that for?" _Hmm, the first words I've said since we got here._

Bobby glances over at it. "What, that? Grei uses it to look up words she doesn't know and tries to spell them." he answers my next question before I can ask it. "It's in here because I'm the only one of us with enough patience to help her find things. She can't read very well; no one ever taught her."

Finn flips to a random page. "Spell pneumotropic!"

"Uh, n-e-w-, uh…" Junko stumbles, wracking his brain. "I give up, you try."

Bobby spits it out right away; "P-n-e-u-m-o-t-r-o-p-i-c. That was last Wednesday's word. I think she got it from one of Stork's medical books."

_Wow. I can see why she wanted him to help her. He must have an amazing memory._

"She actually reads those things?!"

"'Reads' would be an overstatement. 'Stumbles through them picking out words she can pronounce' would be much more accurate."

Stork grins. Aerrow just seems skeptical, but he doesn't say anything. Torch falls through a hole in the ceiling and stops himself just before smacking into the floor.

"Grei's home! I heard her blasting music in her room, so she must be working on something."

"Hmm… usually she says something when she gets back. Oh well, whatever she's working on must be pretty important."

"Do you guys want to see the hanger?" Stork asks, trying to break the silence. If their hanger is anything like the rest of this place then I can almost predict that it will be cluttered, humongous, and full of mechanical stuff. _If Aerrow weren't paying attention I'd bet Finn for the chore of doing the dishes._

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I hear them moving around below me, and I should probably go say hi, but I'm too busy drawing up plans. _I can't leave now or I'll lose my train of thought; I'm just barely holding onto it as it is. _So I crank up my music instead, greasing my one track mind. _Stork would be proud._

**_A cloud hangs over this city by the sea,  
I watch the ships pass and wonder if she might be,  
Out there and sober as a well for loneliness,  
Please do persist girl its time we met and made, a mess_**

**_I picture your face in the back of my eyes,  
A fire in the attic a proof of the prize,  
Anna-Molly, Anna-Molly, Anna-Molly...  
Doo doo doo doo do doo doo doo doo doo_**

They're closer now._ I wonder if Bobby's going to show them the Stacks. I bet not, that's my turf._ My insanity drive is slowing down, I need to get up and dance or draw or something to pick up the pace again. With my luck they'll walk in right when I have my eyes closed doing some crazy move. I'll wait until they've passed me by.

**_The road outside my house is paved with good intentions  
Hired a construction crew, 'cause it's hell on the engine  
You are the dreamer and we are the dream.  
I could write it better than you ever felt it._**

**_So hum hallelujah,  
Just off the key of reason  
I thought I loved you  
It was just how you looked in the light.  
A teenage vow in a parking lot  
"Till tonight do us part"  
I sing the blues and swallow them too_**

_Hmm… I thought they'd be here by now._ Maybe Bobby is avoiding my room. That would be a good idea.

**_Color me any color.  
Speak to me in tongues and share.  
Tell me how you'd love to hate me.  
Tell me how you'd love to care.  
Well I just want to shake us up._**

**_Let's mingle  
And make it well.  
Come together now.  
Yeah let's gel._**

_Alright, I can't stand this; I have to do something else._ I'm having inventors block. _One song, that's it, then I'm back to work!_

**_A penny for your thoughts but a dollar for your insides  
Or a fortune for your disaster  
I'm just a painter and I'm drawing a blank_**

**_We only want to sing you to sleep  
In your bedroom speakers, whoa  
We need umbrellas on the inside  
Get me just right_**

**_They say quitters never win  
But we walk the plank on a sinking ship  
There's a world outside of my front door  
That gets off on being down_**

_Rush! _My insanity drive is back up and running. Now back to those blueprints! _Mm-hmm. Mm-huh… yeah that's right. No that should go there. Oh crap, I love this song. _But I need to get this done! _Well… maybe just one more dance._

**_Oh you know I did it  
It's over and I feel fine  
Nothing you could say is gonna change my mind  
Waited and I waited the longest night  
Nothing like the taste to sweet decline_**

**_I went down, I fell, I fell so fast  
Dropping like the grains in an hourglass  
Never say forever cause nothing last  
Dancing with the bones of my buried past_**

**_Never mind there's nothing I can do  
Bet your life there's something killing you_**

Of course they walk in right during the most ridiculous part of the song. Torch starts laughing and I feel myself blush navy. I run over and quickly turn down the volume.

"Sorry Grei! Were you working?" Bobby asks, making Torch laugh even harder. "We were just headed to the hanger and heard your music." He turns and glares at Torch who takes the hint and zooms off to the hanger before either of us can throw something at him, Stork and his friends trailing in his wake. _My hero._ Bobby knows how weird music makes me. "Seriously though Grei, I thought you were getting a new assignment."

"I did, but it turned out to be something I can do myself; just some blueprints. Nothing to bother the terradons with."

"Ah. Dance break?"

I nod "Dance break."

"Well I'll leave you to it then. Let me know when you're finished. I think Piper's going to want to see the Stacks, and you know them way better than anyone else does. I figured you would be the one to give her the grand tour."

"Will do!" and with that he leaves.

_Phew!_

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"Hey Stork? Can I barrow you for a minute?" Grei drops into the hanger from a chute in the ceiling. I'm not sure how that works because her room is below this floor, but for some reason it does. _Go figure._ She's holding an oversized piece of paper rolled up in one hand.

"Um, sure." Stork shrugs at Aerrow's questioning glance and follows her through a hole in one of the walls.

_Their hanger is humongous!_ It's a hollowed out section of the mountain with that weird hole coming up through the floor and going through the ceiling, and its open all along one wall, with sliding doors pulled back to either side. Bobby says this is where the giant snakes used to sleep when they lived here._ I'm not sure if I believe him._

They must have at least a dozen different skimmers in here, almost all of them in varying states of disrepair. Greison's black skimmer is parked over to one side next to this giant purple and orange thing with several lengths of chain hanging off it. _That must be Bobby's; it's the only one of them that would come anywhere close to being able to carry him. _There's a rack of tools along the wall above them.

Aerrow and Piper are looking at this really sweet ride that could probably go from zero to max in nothing flat! It has a set of blueprints hanging over it. They say "V-86-52" across the top in big block letters. _I'll bet Stork built that. It is blue, green and brown after all, almost everything he makes is._

I glace around at everyone and notice something. "Hey! Where's Radarr?"

Aerrow looks up and smacks himself in the forehead. "We must have left him in the kitchen!"

"If you think you can remember how to get back here I could let you brave the chutes." Bobby grins slightly as he gestures towards the holes in the wall.

"Really?! That would be awesome!"

Bobby laughs. "Eh, why not? Go for it! Second hole to the right of the door."

Aerrow sprints to the hole and slides down, laughing. He'll be back in a few minutes to tell me what a rush it was. _Lucky. _How they can remember which chute is which is beyond me.

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"This is pretty risky Grei. You sure you want to hand over something like this to the Cyclonians?" Stork sounds like he usually does when Piper explains one of her plans. _How I got here I do not know, all I know is that I'm overhearing something that I'm probably not supposed to._

_I must have taken the wrong chute._

"I'm sure. Besides, it's not going to get all the way to Cyclonis. The Dark Ace is going to screw up the delivery." I can see that crazy half-grin on her face, and in this partial light she looks insane and pretty evil. "I'm going to make sure of that."

"Still, wouldn't it be easier just not to give it to them at all? Give them an excuse instead, you're good at that!"

"No, the Dark Ace has to get his hands on it; she has the Memory Stone, remember?" _the Memory Stone?! That's been missing for two months! How did Master Cyclonis get her hands on it?!_ "Granted that is my doing. So I'm just going to have to swing it to my advantage."

"I know you're crazy brilliant and all, but how are you going to do that?" I can only see part of Stork's face from here, but he doesn't look afraid, just slightly irritated.

"Our pre-arranged handoff is right in the path of a freighter ship, if I time it right, the Dark Ace will get it just in time for it to get fried by their engines. Cyclonis will check his memory and find it to be true, and because these are the only blueprints in existence," here her grin gets even wider "I will have upheld my part of the deal without actually assisting the Cyclonians."

"And if that doesn't work?" Stork, always the pessimist, brings her back from her crazy high.

Greison shrugs. "I'll think of something."

He sighs, "You always do. You know I could help you, right?"

"I know, but it's too dangerous to get you or anyone else involved."

"Says you." He shakes his head. "Well, we better get back, the others will be wondering where we are. And you promised to show Piper the Stacks."

She smiles, nicely this time. "A mercenary's work is never done." They walk to the door.

"You like her, don't you."

"What?!"

I sit up from the shadows where I've been crouched. _A mercenary?_

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Alright, like I said before the disclaimer goes on the bottom this time, so its easier to ignore: I do not own (in the order they appear) the Storm Hawks, Incubus or their song 'Anna Molly', Fall Out Boy or their song 'Hum Hallelujah', Collective Soul or their song 'Gel', Fall Out Boy (again) or their song 'Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?', **_OR_** Foo Fighters or their song 'DOA'. That is all. Yes I know its a lot. Now you see why I didn't write it on the top?! (for any/everybody who trusts my judgment, listen to 'DOA' or the second Fall Out Boy song, for some reason I think they're funny.) To quote Finn, and therefore myself, "go figure"._  
_


	10. Nightmares and Dreamers

I do not own the Storm Hawks. No soundtrack this time, so I don't have any other disclaimers to bore you with. And if you end up wondering; every kick-butt girl soldier-for-hire needs a good tattoo, even if it does end up getting hacked off. You are now free to read.

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She lies on her side, her breathing ragged. Her body struggling to heal its many deep and scarring wounds, including three long cuts across her face forming a jagged 'Z' on her young features. Her unfocused eyes stare at a figure in a black on the far side of the room. The glow of their energy blade cuts out. She closes her eyes and lets her green tears spill out from under their lids.

It has been so long since she's been in this much pain. Always there is that dull throb where her heart pushes her acidic blood through her constantly re-healing veins, but never this. The slashes across her body scream as her cells multiply to fill the voids. If she sleeps she would heal faster, but not now, not yet.

"See my child? Even the most resilient animal can be tamed if you use force." The voice comes from the figure. _From the one who caused her torment._

"Yes father, I see." She cracks her eyes and sees a girl, who can't be any older than her, looking down on her in disgust. "Even the strongest of freaks."

She doesn't know what she is. She doesn't know where she came from. She doesn't know if there are others like her or if she is one of a kind. Or the last of one. _But _"I am not a freak."

The girl takes a step back, surprised. "Father. It speaks."

The figure smiles scornfully down at her, stepping out of the shadows, his long black cloak trailing to the ground. "You are a freak. Half human, half monster. You cannot claim the respect or honor either of them commands. You are worthless. Nothing. A freak."

She rolls to her feet, the pain dulling at his words. _Worthless am I?_ She pushes off, stumbling backwards but keeping her feet. He re-lights his energy blade. The snake tattooed on her right arm writhes madly with her pent up fury.

"Then a freak I'll be." The Edrenalyn expands in her veins and she feels herself growing to accommodate it. Her face gets longer and her teeth get sharp. "But this freak is going to kick your butt." The girl's eyes go wide and she backs up against a wall, speechless.

"You wouldn't dare!" the father screeches.

Her nails grow into claws and she falls onto all fours. Five sharp spikes rip through her shirt and a long tail unfurls from the end of her spine, twining around her hard-tipped feet. "Try me."

The man lunges and she springs forward, growling.

And darkness replaces the fiery red in her vision. Spinning off into a painless black nothing.

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My head snaps up, sweat dripping from my face. My hands fly to it and I almost expect to feel warm blood and jagged scars. But I know there's nothing there. My body has long since healed them, leaving nothing where I should be marked for life. _And I am, just no one can see it. _I lay my head back on my arms. _No one knows about that, not even Stork. I haven't dreamt of that day in so long, why now?_ I'm working for the daughter of my first and worst tormentor. _I must be one seriously messed up kid. A psychiatrist would have a field day with me._

_I need some air._ I get up and walk to the hanger. The doors are already open, so I crawl out to the rocks where Stork and I used to sit. He's already there.

"Couldn't sleep?" He jumps and swings around as I curl up on the rock above him.

"No, I always get up in the middle of the night."

I roll my eyes. "Sarcasm will get you nowhere."

"Fine." He pulls a face "I needed to think. This is the best place for that."

We're quiet for a while, me with my tail tucked under my chin and him leaning back on my rock, toes gripping the one that he's sitting on. I go ahead and bring up what I know he's thinking about. _There is no way he would do it on his own._

"If you like her that much you need to tell her so." Not a question he can squirm out of, a statement of fact. _And it is a fact, I can tell._

By how he holds himself when he's around her. The way she can get his attention with even the slightest gesture. How he watches her from across the room. The way he breathes her presence like everyone else breathes air.

"She doesn't like me that way. I'm just a friend."

I shake my head and close my eyes. _She does too._ I haven't even known her but for a day and I can already tell that she acts differently when she's near him. And how she sort of looked sideways at him when we were going to the Stacks gave it away. _At least to me. Apparently only to me from the way Stork's been talking._

"How two people can be so completely in love with each other yet completely oblivious that the other person feels the same way is so far beyond me I can barely see it."

I feel Stork's surprised gaze turn toward me, but I don't open my eyes quite yet. _I'll need them to drive the point home._

"She does?"

"Do you?" I want to hear him say it before I give him any more advice.

"I love her so much it hurts." He just barely whispers it, but I hear and it's enough for me.

"What are you telling me for then?" I open one blue green-sparked eye and lock it onto his yellow one. "Go tell her."

He gets up and walks back into the hanger, a Merb on a mission.

I close my eye again and allow myself a smile, my earlier nightmare all but forgotten. _He'll tell her. Maybe not now, maybe not tonight, but the first chance he gets, he'll tell her. It's a grand slam for Greison and score about a gazillion points for team Stork._

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Master Cyclonis was breathing hard, the Memory Stone back on its shelf in her crystal lab. It was back in her possession, and soon now, she would know the truth. _The truth about that monster that had attacked her father, that had driven him close enough to the brink of death that those pathetic Storm Hawks had been able to push him over the edge._

And now it was happening again. Different squadron, different generation, but it was happening again. And she needed that monster back. Not to train and unleash as her father had planned, but to make her invincible.

The blood sample in front of her was all the proof she needed. It could heal and regenerate any living tissue, and once she had that freak and a limitless supply she could engineer it not to kill its host in the painful healing process.

She allowed herself a smirk. _Soon, so soon, she would know the name of the one who had caused her father's downfall. It had not felt true pain. Not yet._

The ultimate weapon and the ultimate revenge all wrapped up in one tidy package. _How convenient._

She reached once more toward the crystal, to see that one slice of memory again. That insane grin, those fiery red-tinted blue and green eyes, all so familiar but she couldn't quite place them.

_Ah well, she would know soon enough._ When her mercenary brought back those blueprints and she could share its image with her Talons it would only be a matter of time until that freak was found. _She could wait that much longer._ She touched the Memory Stone to the blood sample and let herself be lost in the monster's memory of those few minutes.

_Soon enough, she would know._

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Oooh, creepy. I know some of you thought she was going to torture the Storm Hawks with it (and who knows, she still might) but I wanted to add a dimension that no one else knew about, not even Grei. I hope this turns out alright but I don't really know if it will or not yet, so review and give me any ideas you may or may not have. And for those of you who were wondering yes Greison did in fact call the Dark Ace 'princess' at the end of chapter 8. Its part of the reason he hates her so much; he can't kill her for saying stuff like that or Cyclonis will absolutely murder him. It just seemed to work. And I thought it was funny, so there._  
_


	11. Blue and Silver Tears

Here's one of the chapters I was referring to when I said 'creepy'. Okay, it may be more sad than creepy for you; but creepy its for me. The next one is too. To avoid breaking up this chapter from the next one any more than I have to by writing at the bottom all my notes are going up here. Please review this chapter, I need you're support. I promise to have another, longer, chapter up by midnight tomorrow (9/15). My sincere apologies for the depression that may ensue after reading this chapter; if you experience any please review and let me know. I do not own the Storm Hawks.

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Stork has been acting weird, especially since I saw him last in the hanger. I'm in the library now. _I don't know why they call it the Stacks, but it's huge! I've never seen so many books in one place! _Piper loves it in here, I can tell. She's helping me find this book on wallop history. I know it's the middle of the night, but she was there and I was so excited to find out something new about my kind that I didn't want to go to sleep.

I'm coming down the ladder when Stork finds us.

"Um, hey, Piper? Can I talk to you for a minute?" He sort of glances at me. That's my cue to scoot.

"Sure. Um…" She looks at me too and I step off the ladder and walk away down the hall. He steps forward and takes her hands.

"Piper, I-"

Just at that moment I trip over my huge feet and, in an attempt to steady myself, pull on a bookshelf, dumping every volume on my head at once. _That's a lot of books._ Stork lets go and they rush over to help dig me out. I offer to leave, saying it's for everyone's safety, but Piper insists that I stay and help clean up. All while we're putting the books back in order Stork keeps half-glancing over at Piper. I take the first opportunity to leave the two of them alone.

I take my book and sit down in the kitchen to read. _It's nice in here, even when Bobby's not around._ A few minutes later Piper walks through, lost in thought.

"Heya Piper! What'd Stork want to talk to you about?"

She jerks up and looks at me. "What? Um… nothing. Well… uh, yeah, it was nothing."

It's obviously not nothing, but I just shrug and pretend to go back to reading. When she's gone I close the book and go back to the Stacks. Something is definitely up. I walk around the corner, but stop at what I see.

Stork is sitting on the floor with his knees tucked up under his chin, arms around his legs. From where I'm standing I can see huge silver tears rolling down his long green face. His shoulders shake with his noiseless sobs. I feel the urge to go comfort him, but he wouldn't want me to have seen him crying.

I hear him muttering under his breath. "Why? Why did you have to be wrong? Of course, but why now? Why this? Should have known, should have known. Aerrow. Oh Grei…"

There is nothing I can do. I slowly walk back to my loaned room, Stork's misery clinging to me like so many cobwebs.

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As soon as Junko leaves I take her hands again. "Piper, I-" I hesitate, then look her in the eyes. _Those beautiful orange eyes._ "I think I love you."

So many emotions race across her features at once that I can't identify any of them. Then her eyes drop to our hands. And her hands drop to her sides.

"Stork, I- I'm- I love… Aerrow." She looks at my face, which I struggle to keep from crashing to the floor. "Stork, I'm sorry. I-" I cut her off.

"No. No, it's fine."

I take a step back.

"It's fine."

Another step.

"It's fine."

My eyes focus on my feet.

_My horrible, misshapen, not-human feet._

"Fine."

She starts to say something, but then stop and walks away without another word. I let myself slide to the floor.

Tucking myself into a ball I feel tears falling down my face, and my heart falls with them.

_Why Grei? Why did you have to be wrong? Everyone is sometimes, of course, but why now? Why this? I should have known, should have known. Aerrow. Of course it's Aerrow. He's brave, he's strong. He's human. Oh Grei, you were so sure and you saw everything else, why not this?_

My thoughts chase each other around my head until finally I cease to think at all.

_It hurts so much._

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_I can't believe I told him that. I can't believe I lied to him when he said the one thing I have dreamed of hearing for what seems like forever. And I killed him. He pours his heart out to me and I stomp it into the dust. I love him so much it hurts, so why did I lie? And why did I say I was in love with _Aerrow_? He's like my brother, but Stork doesn't know that. Aerrow is to me like Greison is to him. Grei! I'll bet she could see the chemistry from the start, so what happens now?_ The truth claws at my insides like some rabid, caged, animal. It hurts. _Oh Stork, please forgive me!_

The door to my loaned room long since shut behind me, I slam my fist into the solid rock wall. It gives. I fall into a strange glowing chamber. The walls, floor and ceiling are all made of a strange, clear crystal I've never seen before. I look up and see moonlight filtering through a hole in the ceiling; its reflection creating the silver glow. I look down and see…

Pictures.

Scattered several deep on the ground. Drawings, all in ink, of people doing regular things. I recognize nearly all of them.

Bobby cooking; Torch hotwiring a bomb; Stork fixing a skimmer; Aerrow riding his on own; Finn lining up a shot; Junko sizing up a blaster; me refining a crystal; and Greison arguing with some guy I don't know, and apparently winning.

The deeper I dig the darker they get.

Aerrow fighting off the Dark Ace; Bobby cracking a chain whip; Junko punching out Snipe; Torch gunning down some Talons from midair; Finn in a death lock with Ravess; Someone whose face I can't see wielding a green energy blade; Stork wrestling with the Condor's controls; and me. Locking staffs with Master Cyclonis. Like I did four years ago. I shudder. _There is no way any of these guys would know about that._

The last layer is the worst.

All of us on some sort of brink of disaster; crashing; held at sword point; about to be crushed. So many of this huge, gray, wolfish monster; fire burning in its eyes; about to strike the fatal blow. And pictures of Grei on the sidelines, unable to help.

The last picture I find is of them both; inside each other, one mutating into the other, I can't tell which into which. The look of sadness and pain and rage on their collective face makes me want to barf. _I can see why Stork would want to leave. Even he's not this disturbed._

_Oh…Stork…_

I run out of the room, the wall sealing shut behind me. Falling onto the bed I start sobbing uncontrollably. The molten tears burn my eyes, but I don't care. I deserve it. _How could I? How could I do that to him?_ I cry for at least an hour before I can breath again, and then I pass out, exhausted.

_It hurts so much._


	12. Loose Ends

Here's another chapter (at 11:25 my time I might add) and I'm tired so I'm not going to say much. I do not own the Storm Hawks. Enjoy your new chapter. Please review. I'm going to bed. You can read it now.

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Aerrow's the one who notices the smoke. He's the only one of us who's actually paying attention. Stork is glued to the Condor's control center, Piper is staring vacantly at a bunch of maps and charts, and Finn and I are messing with the blasters. Stork and Piper haven't spoken to each other all morning. Even blissfully unaware Aerrow has noticed that something's wrong.

We didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Grei. Bobby said she left early, something about a delivery. _Too bad really. She might have known what Stork and Piper were fighting about last night. At least, I assume they were fighting. I don't really know._

"Is that…smoke?" Me and Finn look out the window at the dissipating black cloud.

"Yeah, it is!"

"Stork, head for that spot, let's go check it out!" Stork mutters something about fire and doom, but turns in the right direction. _Everything back to normal._

We touch down in a clearing near the source, but we can't see the smoke from the ground, so Aerrow tells us to split up. He goes one way, Finn goes another, I go a third, and Piper goes a fourth. _I'd rather be with Finn. Its not that I'm scared or anything; its just that if I have to make a decision I feel better if there's someone else around to help me out._

I haven't been out here more than ten minutes when I find the crash; a twisted pile of black metal steaming slightly in the middle of a small crater. A lane dragged in the dirt leads to a figure laid out on the ground.

_Greison._

Her body and face are torn beyond recognition, but no one else has hair like that. And no one else would still be breathing after a crash like that. It's shallow, uneven, but there. She's lying in a pool of some green liquid, and as I knell next to her I start to cry. _I can't help it; she just looks so broken._ Her breath fades a little more and I cry harder, my tears falling on her prone form.

"Junko?" I keep crying, not noticing my name being said.

"I didn't realize there was rain in the forecast today."

I look down, and into the blue green eyes in her already slightly less scarred face. "Grei!"

She grimaces at me, visibly in pain. "Hey bud, why are you crying? It woke me up! And what are you doing here anyway?"

"We saw the smoke from your skimmer from the air and came down to investigate. You're hurt." _Stating the obvious, yep, that's me. _"I need to get you back to the Condor!"

"No, I'll be fine! Really! I just need to sleep." She's far from fine, but I don't argue the point. "Besides, I don't think I can walk right now." Her eyes drift down and I look to her legs. Cuts and puckered gray skin show through hole in the pants of her scorched black and gray uniform.

"Well then I'll just have to carry you!" She opens her mouth to protest but I stop her. "There is no way I am leaving you here to have your face get eaten off by giant possums!"

"You sound just like Stork!" She laughs, but her laugh turns into a cross between a cough and a strangled yelp as her lungs falter and I scoop her up, gently as I can.

It's not until I'm holding her in my arms that I see how extensive the damage to her body is. _I'm no doctor, but even I know she should be dead after all this. _She whispers something I don't quite catch.

"Shh… you just go back to sleep, I'll protect you."

Her eyes close gratefully, and I race back to the Condor as quickly as possible without moving her too much.

_She needs help._

_Fast._

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I run water into the bathroom sink. Carefully taking off Greison's blood soaked jacket I wince at the sight of her burnt arm. We already removed the metal one; Stork and Junko are fiddling with in the bridge.

Turning off the tap, I wet a cloth and gently wipe some of the soot from her face, accidentally taking a layer of skin with it. The boys all wanted to help me get her cleaned up, but I'd rather do it alone.

Stork absolutely freaked out when Junko got back, carrying Grei in his arms. She hasn't woken up since she talked to him. As soon as we took off Aerrow had Stork set course for the hospital on Terra Rex. _It's a long flight, but there's not much we can do for her here._

What I really want to know is how she ended up crashed in the middle of nowhere; but I can wait until she wakes up. I suspect that Cyclonia was somehow involved.

"Piper?" I whirl around to see her watching me from the floor. "Where am I?"

I kneel down beside her. Other than her head, she's not moving. "You're on the Condor. Junko got you back here in record time, especially considering the condition you're in."

"Oh." I reach out to brush off some more dirt, and she shies away from my touch. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to get you cleaned up. You'll heal faster that way, and Stork would kill me if you got an infection!"

She smiles. "Yep, that sounds like Stork! Did he tell you yet?"

My stomach lurches. _She couldn't possibly know!_ "Um, tell me what?"

"He must not have. Trust me, you'd remember." _She knows I love him back._ Her eyes slide out of focus and close. Her breathing levels off. _Should I tell her that he told me? What I said back?_

"Grei?" But she's already drifted back to sleep.

She looks so small and fragile lying there, and I realize for the first time that she's younger than me; than all of us. And she trusts us; she trusts me; for the sole reason that Stork trusted us first. _I have to tell him the truth._ But first I'll do what I can for Grei.

An hour and a half, plus much flinching on my part, later she looks like someone who just took a nasty fall off their skimmer instead of a dying burn victim. Her Edrenalyn infused blood is doing a spectacular job with the repairs, and all the rough skin is gone; although there are still quite a few raw green patches that have not healed over yet. _She might not need to go to the hospital after all._

I hear a faint knock on the door. "Come on in, she's fine."

Stork pokes his head around the doorframe and hesitates slightly before coming around to her opposite side, closing the door behind him. Kneeling next to her and across from me, I look at him, but his eyes are trained on her sleeping face. Her eyelids flutter and her breath catches, but then resumes its steady thrum.

_I have to tell him._

_Now._

_Bad timing though it may be, I'm not getting a chance like this again._

"Stork?" He stiffens at his name, ears standing at attention. "I lied." _Not entirely untrue, and it gets me a fleeting glace before his eyes dart back to hers. _I watch her too, and it helps me keep talking.

"I don't know why, I wish I could give you a reason, but the truth is…" Her breath catches and evens off again. "…the truth is I don't love Aerrow, he's like a brother to me. Like Greison is a sister to you. The truth is…" Another catch and another release. "…I love you. I always have. I wish I had told you before, when you gave me the chance. Can you forgive me?"

I look back up at him, and I'm startled to see that he's watching me. I almost look away again, but his eyes hold my gaze. If it weren't for the injured girl lying next to me I would probably fall into them and drown. _Drowning has never sounded so wonderful._

"I already have."

He leans forward and gives me a small kiss; careful, wary of a trick. _Wary of rejection._ I tilt his chin and kiss him back, longer, deeper this time, as desperate for the truth as I am to earn his trust back. The truth and the love fill every corner of the room and of my heart, and it is just that. Truth and love. Until we're both completely drowning in it. _Drowning has never been so amazingly, totally, wonderful._

_---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _

Floating back to wakefulness, I feel a warm glow filling the room I'm in.

I crack my eyes and see Piper and Stork kissing over me.

I smile.

_I can wake up later, this is their time_. I close my eyes and let my consciousness spread out flat, like the horizon line.

Outside of the room is worry, but beyond that I feel wind, and then I feel another source of strange irrational happiness. I smile some more and drift farther from the waking surface. _It feels like almost everybody's having a good day._

The pain fades from my body as I escape once again into sleep.

_---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _

Cyclonis was happy.

She hadn't been happy in a long while, but she was happy now.

Her freak had been found, and she hadn't even needed the projection harmonizer to find her. The Dark Ace, her greatest fighter, had seen her for himself, and although he didn't know it yet, he was soon to be rewarded for his loyalty. _Invincibility seemed like reward enough._

By the time he found that monster it would be almost healed, but in no condition to fight. _Even these things had their limits;_ she had seen that firsthand.

Humming, she walked to the newly built harmonizing room. The parts of those blueprints they had been able to salvage had been put to good use; _it might be fun to torment some prisoners with her new toy,_ and if her experiments went quickly and as planned she would have plenty of them very soon.

The only cloud that marred her spectacular mood was the knowledge that one of her greatest enemies had been working under her command without her finding out.

This had happened before, but not to such the extent that the imposter had actually begun to earn her respect. _Respect she gave to so few._ _Not that this girl was really an imposter._

_There are no laws saying where a mercenary's allegiances must lie._

_Most annoying._

She'd have to be more careful about who she hired from now on.

This slight trip though, had actually worked to her advantage.

_First the freak, the Storm Hawks soon after._

She allowed herself a small, off-centered smile as she looked at the glowing blue crystal mounted in the center of the harmonizer.

_This was going to be a very enjoyable week._


	13. Bombshell

I do not own the Storm Hawks. I'm not going to say anything else up here but to _please_ review and to tell you that I have a little warning note at the bottom, so please read that too. Thank you, that is all. Continue at your own will.

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Greison insists that we take her back to Scilar instead of to Terra Rex. She says she's fine and that;

"I need to fix myself a new skimmer so I can keep doing…" She kind of pauses here. "Stuff."

On the way back she keeps asking to help with anything and everything. Eventually Junko takes her down to the engine room with him to check the pressure gauges and mechanical stuff like that. _She just seems so completely happy about that._ Aerrow kept looking like he wanted to interrogate her while she was on the bridge. He seems a little worried about having her on the Condor at all, but I'm the only one who notices. _Junko is never really concerned with that sort of thing, and Stork and Piper are off in their own little happy-worlds._

Ordinarily I'd just think they're both happy about Grei being alright, but Piper keeps glancing over at Stork and blushing, and Stork is humming to himself. _Maybe Piper finally told him about her crush. If she did all I can say is it's about time. Those two have been dancing little circles around each other for way too long._

The radio crackles, making us all jump. "Calling the Condor, repeat, calling the Condor."

Aerrow flicks the speaker button. "This is the Condor, identify yourself."

"Hello Aerrow." We all freeze and stare at the speaker. _Dark Ace._ "You have something I want, and I'm giving you the opportunity to hand it over of your own accord. I suggest you take it."

"We don't have anything of yours." Aerrow seems genuinely confused.

"Don't play dumb with me boy," Dark Ace snarls, "The radio on that insurgent's belt was easy enough to track. Hand her over. We have you surrounded and outnumbered, and I am prepared to use force. You have five minutes to consider my offer; then I'll be there to get her. You refuse and we'll attack." The radio cuts out.

Aerrow walks out of the bridge and returns a minute later with Junko and Greison on his heels. Junko is protesting loudly.

"We can't give her to them! Why would we hand her over?! We can take them!"

Grei walks over to Stork and the two of them look out the window at the rapidly approaching dot that I assume must be the Dark Ace. Junko is circling around Aerrow now, cutting him off every time he tries to get away. _He just doesn't understand why we would hand a still-weak kid over to our enemy. Personally, neither do I. _Now Piper is ganging up on Aerrow too, and the two of them are getting progressively louder until Aerrow yells:

"Because she works for them!!!"

Stork and Grei flinch simultaneously and the rest of us stare openmouthed at Aerrow, who is full-out glaring at the back of her head. _Silence._ She sighs. _It can't be true, it can't be!_

"How long have you known?" _No denial, no anger; she just sounds kind of sad._

"I took the wrong chute when I was looking for Radarr and I overheard you and Stork talking about it." We all turn and look at her. She swivels around and looks back. Her eyes are dull, with none of their usual sparkle or fire. _It's like someone opened a spigot and drained all the color out of her gaze._ Her face is set, like stone.

"I wish you had told me sooner. I was planning on telling you myself under more," She glances at the ever-nearing skimmer and back at us, "Pleasant circumstances. And you're wrong. I don't work for them;" _I knew it! I-_ "At least, not all the time." There's a pause and we're all waiting expectantly for her to continue.

"I'm a mercenary."

The room goes cold, like someone dropped a Blizzard crystal, and everyone takes a step back from Grei. Everyone except Aerrow, who is still giving her a white-hot death stare; and Stork, who is still starting out the window and seems intent on not getting pulled into this conversation.

_A mercenary._

Out of all the people in the Atmos, mercenaries are considered the worst and the lowest. They will do anything for the highest bidder, kill without a second thought and they have no loyalty. _It doesn't matter what you start out as, once you're a mercenary you're another monster all together._ Already this newly induced smog is blotting out the happy, crazy, mechanic stuntress we've gotten to know these past two days. I try to peer through it, but with the lights gone from her eyes she really looks the part.

"You might be glad to know that I've been lucky enough not to have to kill anyone consciously yet," _Consciously?_ "And I hope not to start anytime soon." Greison looks out the window again. The skimmer is close enough now to see that it is, in fact, the Dark Ace riding it. We have maybe a minute until he gets here. She looks back to us, this time meeting Aerrow's fiery gaze with her own stony gray one. _The stone speaks._

"I could never ask you to keep me here, even if you wanted to after all this. And I want to thank you," Grei breaks their stare-off and looks at each of us in turn. I think I see a glimmer of blue in her eyes. "All of you, for everything."

She looks up at Stork standing there next to her. He meets her gaze and they share a small sad smile that bridges the species gap. _For a second they really do look like brother and sister._

Then she walks out of the bridge without a backwards glance. A few seconds later she appears on the runway and walks calmly to the Dark Ace's skimmer parked on the end. He roughly binds her hands in chains and pushes her back so she's sitting sidesaddle behind him.

Greison takes one last look up at us through the windows and somehow locks eyes with me. _Suddenly the mercenary is gone, and so is the crazy mechanic. All I see is a teenage girl taking her death sentence without tears. It rips me up inside. _I find myself being held back by Aerrow as I try to break through the glass to get to her. _Not that it would matter. Dark Ace, Grei, and the skimmer are already gone, lost to the clouds._

I paste myself to the window; vacantly hoping that she'll come crashing back into the deck, laughing like crazy.

"Good choice Storm Hawks," Dark Ace's voice comes over the airwaves, but nobody moves. "Because you've cooperated I have ordered that you be given a twenty-four hour reprieve. I suggest you use it wisely." The feed breaks off. _Still no movement._

Junko is the first to speak. "Why would anyone want to be a mercenary?" _I'm pretty sure it's just a question to nowhere, but Stork answers it anyway._

"I don't know why just anyone would want to be a mercenary; but I do know the one reason Grei gave me for her." Piper comes over and slips an arm around his waist. "She said that if she was going to be despised then she wanted it to be for what she did, not what she was. Hated at least for something she could control instead of something over which she had none." Piper gives him a small squeeze and then lets go.

He walks over to the controls and turns the Condor; which has been gently drifting; back toward Terra Scilar. _We need to tell Bobby and Torch about this._

Aerrow sits down and puts his head on the table, arms crossed over his eyes.

Radarr runs down to the hanger to find his friend, the chicken that lives there.

Junko goes to hide in the engine room. Most likely so no one will hear him crying.

Piper heads to the crystal lab. Whether she gets there or breaks down on the way I won't know.

I leave myself glued to the glass, not really thinking at all.

No one says anything for the longest time.

_-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

"Should I be expecting guests?"

"No. I told them the truth. The last thing they would do is come after me." The skimmer jerks and she falls against his back. He stiffens.

"Get off me."

"Unless you want me to fall off your ride, I can't."

"Fine." He growls.

"So what does she want with me anyway?"

He smiles. He's been waiting for her to ask that. "I don't know the details, but it has something to do with invincibility." Now it's her turn to stiffen.

That's how they fly, all the way back to Cyclonia. They don't even set down on the battleship accompanying them. He doesn't trust anyone else with this cargo. She stays quiet the whole time, even when she is roughly pulled off his skimmer and escorted under armed guard to Master Cyclonis's bio lab. She stops just outside the door and turns to face him one last time.

"I know you hate me; you have every right to, but tell me true princess;" She catches his gaze and holds it with a crazy half-grin. "Did you miss me?"

One of the guards shoves her backwards into the chamber, slamming the door behind her. And the Dark Ace is left staring in shock at cold metal.

He doesn't say anything for the longest time.

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Here is my note:

There are two reasons I took so long (by my standards) to update: 1) I wanted to let y'all all be happy-happy-joy-joy for a little while before I dropped this bombshell of a chapter on your heads. 2) I am having a writer's lock down (writers block; but more like all your ideas being stuck in a box kind of thing) on where to go from here. So please, _HELP ME!!!!!!!!!_ Review and tell me what I should do next because I really have no idea. I will take this opportunity to warn you that it may be a while before I can update again. Your reviews can help me work faster.


	14. Just Between Friends

Ugh, so I finally updated, thanks to some suggestions and spastic writing of other stuff for an intermisson. Thank you for being so patient. This chapter is short, but at least its going somewhere. The end is kind of abrupt too, but hopefully I'll be able to continue without much of a delay. I do not own the Storm Hawks.

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"I keep telling you, the pain isn't from the Edrenalyn; it's from your cells accelerating their division process. The pain is part of the cure."_ Greison has been here three weeks now, and the lack of progress is beginning to make her captor… irritable._

Master Cyclonis slams her hands down on the table Grei is strapped to and glares at her. "Lies! There must be a way to bypass it! How else could you have survived all your life?!"

Greison shrugs as best she can against her bindings. "Its constant for me, I've gotten used to it."

The Master grits her teeth in frustration and throws a switch on the counter. Magenta light fills one of the waiting syringes, pulsing slightly in anticipation. The girl on the slab closes her eyes and turns her head away from the oncoming needle. _We've been through this before. _The liquid will short out every nerve in her body, sending her into spasms of pain, then darkness, then pain again as her blood repairs the damage. The first time Cyclonis did this to her she howled, like some sort of branded wolf. _It's too bad she's learned to contain the sound; that was really quite entertaining._

"Dark Ace." My head snaps up.

"Yes Master."

She smiles. "Our guest is proving most unhelpful, and I believe we are reaching the conclusion of our tests. I think we will keep her around for a while, humiliate her some more, perhaps even venture to invite her to fight for us again, although I doubt she'll agree to. However, eventually we will need to dispose of her. How do you suggest we kill something that can spontaneously heal itself?" _A trick question._ I've been thinking about that and I know she already has the answer.

"Drown it. If the tissue is dead it can't regenerate, and lack of air will kill the brain, and in turn, the body."

Her smile widens. "Good, you've been paying attention. I was beginning to think there was no point in letting you stand guard over a defenseless freak." She breezes past me and walks out of the room.

_She's right of course, there is no point._

The magenta keeps her in a perpetually weakened state, and although she could probably still kick my but with a day's recovery, there is no possibility of her escaping that table without help. I can't seem to stay still unless I'm in the same room with my eyes on her. _No matter where I go its like having someone breathing down my neck; I keep thinking I see her in the shadows, thinking that she's going to pop up out of nowhere with another 'did you miss me?' to completely destroy my resolve._

_In short, this girl bugs me. A lot._

So I stand guard over her, and she watches me. Every day. For the past three weeks. _I can't wait to be rid of her; she's driving me insane._

_Except, I can't kill her. Not even in my mind._ Every time I get close I end up strangling myself instead.

She tried to talk to me a few times in the first week, teasing me until I thought I might get over myself and ram my blade through her heart, for all the good that would do. _That's how I learned her name._ But she's since stopped, like she can't be bothered; and she watches me, which is far, far worse as it has the opposite effect.

_She's unconscious now; maybe I could leave her for just a few moments without her haunting me. Just a short amount of time might be all I need to get over this. Like a bad cold._

I turn and walk out of the chamber and head for my own room. When I open the door I could swear I see a small gray figure crouched next to my guitar. But then it's gone.

_I can't wait to be rid of her._

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We got here around two weeks later than we should have. Cyclonian attacks all over the Atmos have nearly doubled. It's like they're not afraid anymore. I didn't mean to make then stronger.

When I told them about Grei I was angry and really scared, even though I'll never admit it to anyone; and it just sort of fell out. _I wanted her off the Condor, away from my friends, gone to somewhere she couldn't easily betray us from. I didn't mean to hurt her. I really didn't mean to hurt them. When she said 'mercenary' all I heard was 'Cyclonian spy'._

So far no one will speak to me unless they have to. Stork doesn't talk to anyone except Piper. _We are a well oiled fighting machine, but it's like our friendships have been put on ice._

When we finally got here Stork landed us directly in the hanger bay. _I hadn't realized the ceiling was so tall._ Torch is the one that met us.

"Hey you guys!" He flies in laughing, buzzing circles around our heads. "When we said you could come by anytime we didn't know you'd be coming back so soon! Did you miss us that much?!"

He hovers in front of Stork, who isn't smiling. "Hey, I know I'm not Grei, but don't I at least get a smile?" Stork looks down at his feet. "Oh no. It's about her isn't it?" He drops down onto the floor so he's in line with Stork's gaze.

"Torch, get Bobby. We need to talk."

I can almost see Torch's eyes widen behind his multifaceted red goggles. He nods silently and flies over and straight down into one of the holes in the floor.

Stork walks towards the main tunnel, and looks over his shoulder back at us. "Coming?" We all hurry to catch up with him.

Bobby meets us in that main-room-tunnel-crossroads place. He has a dish cloth over one arm and looks extremely worried. Torch hovers over one of his huge shoulder and seems much more subdued than usual.

"What is it?" _No formalities or anything; just cut to the chase._ "Torch said it had something to do with Grei." Stork nods. He looks tired.

"We found her crashed on one of the unmarked terras nearby, and Junko got her back to the Condor so she could heal. We started out heading to Terra Rex, but when Grei woke up she wanted to come back here instead. On our way we got a transmission from the Dark Ace. He wanted… he wanted her. And…" He trails off, he can't say anymore. _That's the most he's said in two weeks. Now it's my turn._

"And I convinced them to let him take her." They all turn and look at me; Bobby and Torch with no change in their emotions, but the rest of my team all stare at me, completely taken aback. Except for Stork, who's still watching the floor.

"He took her back to Cyclonia and we haven't seen her since. We were heading back here, but we kept getting missions. The Cyclonians are getting more and more aggressive, like they're not afraid anymore."

Bobby nods. "That would be the Edrenalyn. Even if Master Cyclonis hasn't figured out a way to incorporate it into human blood without killing the subject, which I very much doubt she has, the residual fumes from having Greison on Cyclonia would kick all their soldiers' past insanity. They just don't care anymore. That's part of the reason Grei avoids humans. She drives them insane by her very presence."

"Have you seen the Dark Ace recently?" Now all available eyes are on Torch.

"What?!"

He tilts his head to one side. "He hates her, and she says his genetic makeup means he's not as quickly affected by the Edrenalyn. I just wondered if he was trying to control his slap-happy troops."

"As a matter of fact, we haven't! Does that mean anything?" Piper seems excited by this tidbit of information. _I wonder if it's relevant._

Bobby's turn. "Only that she's not dead yet. He'll be guarding her."

Torch shoots into the air and zooms once around the room, stopping just before Bobby's other ear. "Does this mean we're going after her?"

The blue lizard rolls his eyes. "Of course it means we're going after her ya dingbat!"

He laughs. "You sound just like her!"

"Eh, I try."

"Can we help?" I ask tentatively. _The rest of the team might still be mad at me._

His grin shoves away my fear. "I thought you'd never ask. Head on back to the hanger, we have something we need to take care of."

Everybody else practically runs back to the Condor, but I walk more slowly. As a result, I hear something as I pass the kitchen. I stop and listen without thinking. Piper turns around and sees me. She makes a face.

"Haven't you learned your lesson about eavesdropping?!" I motion for her to be quiet and she sighs noisily before walking over to where I'm standing.

"We're still the Freaks of Wrath." Says a voice, unmistakably Bobby's. A whirr of wings brings the next.

"And we can still do this right. "

"I don't know; it's been a while. I've lost most of my brave."

Bobby chuckles. "You don't lose brave. And even if you could, you're still the bravest Merb I've ever met. You fly that big heap of a ship when most wouldn't even get both their feet off the ground at the same time!"

"So let's do this for Grei." Torch says. "Hands in."

Bobby; "For the large."

Torch; "And the small."

Stork; "For the invariably off-centered."

There's a pause. I can only assume this is where Greison would say something if she were here. Then the all murmur in unison:

"And because insanity itself demands it of us."

Piper tugs on my arm and we hurry to catch up with the others. _Whatever that was, it was something just between them. Just between friends._ Now I know for sure. _We're going to get her back._ There was some sort of binding agreement in that childish ritual. I wonder if we're like that, and just don't realize it. _But we're going to get her back._


	15. Excuses, Excuses

I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M FINALLY UPDATING!! I REALLY can't believe it took me this effing long to get around to actually TYPING this thing. If you don't want to read my rant go ahead and hit the next button, I only put this in as a separate chapter to save y'all some scrolling time on the real thing.

So...

I've been writing a novel, sci-fi, I'll let you know if it ever gets published.

My mom stripped me of my computer privileges when she found out I was failing English.

Then she stole all my notebooks because I was failing World History.

I got everything back over winter break because I got my grades back up (good, or you'd think so).

THEN I got carpel tunnels (bet I spelled it wrong) syndrome from writing too much and spent two weeks in a wrist brace.

We started reading "The Odyssey" in English as soon as I got out of it.

And here we are, on my previous chapter's six-month anniversary, and I am finally getting back to you.

I think I have two or three more chapters before the story's over, and no offense to y'all, but I can't wait 'till it is. Plot-Nematodes have been eating my brain, and I have other stuff that I'd like to write for you, but it didn't feel right starting something new until this thing is good and done with. So then, if you've bothered to read my reasons, I will leave you now and let you get back to the story.

Thank you.

ss  
\--/)


	16. The REAL next chapter Memoria1

So no, I don't own the Storm Hawks or any of their adversaries, just Bobby, Torch, and Greison.

* * *

My laughter rings out through the air vents of Cyclonia. Startled Talons of various ranks jump, drop things, looks around, and act generally confused. Phase 1 of Piper's plan is in action.

It's a brilliant plan really, the ducts are just wide enough for me to crawls through and the metal they're made of is the perfect resonant tone to throw my sound everywhere without a decrease in volume. No one can tell where I am, but Master Cyclonis will know I'm here. And so will Grei. I can't wait to see Grei. _She'll be so proud of me! I got over my claustrophobia just to save her, and here I am, sliding through endless square tubes without a thought to how small they are! And dark. And cold. And the wall are closing in on me… _I shake my head and resume my pace, laughing harder than ever. _Almost lost it there. I can't lose it. I have to keep strong for Grei._

_Such a brilliant plan. _Most people would go for the 'silent but deadly' approach, but we opted for the much less frequently used 'raucous but deadly anyway' path. That's just up my ally. I'm good at being loud.

I peek out another grate in the side of the wall. _Blech, more Cyclonians. _Still no Grei. Next one then. _Ooh! Eruption crystal! Shoot Torch, concentrate! But it's about to explode! And then the Icer next to it will go off and deep-freeze whatever hasn't been decimated! Well… maybe just a minute… jeez Torch, what are you, a goldfish?! Get movin'!_ I shake myself off and keep going, my laughter faltering momentarily as that epic blast takes place behind me. Claustrophobia and distraction-via-bomb both in one day. Greison owes me big time. _Well think of the devil, there she is!_

She doesn't move as I approach the grate, or even as I stop laughing like a maniac. A silence that sudden and that monstrously deafening should have had her up like a shot, but she doesn't react at all. Her skin is so pale it almost reflects the stunning white of her hair, and as much as I wan to burst in there and shake her into wakefulness I don't. I can't, that would mess with the plan.

Piper was very specific about that. Do not mess with the plan. As much as Stork and Bobby tried to explain that I have the attention span of a two-month-old housefly and to keep it simple, the only thing I managed to walk, er, fly, away from the conversation with other than the plan was not to mess with the plan. They need to know exactly what I'm going to do at all times or else we're all toast.

_I wonder what kind of toast? Probably burnt toast. Or maybe cheese toast…_

My hands deftly unscrew the bolts holding the air grate in place, scanning the room the entire time for sensors or anything else that might give me away. A glint of metal catches my eye. It's Grei's arm. I'll have to grab that before I leave, she'll kind of flip out if I see it but don't bring it with me.

Still keeping a hold on the grate, I gently push it out of its socket. A sudden noise at the door snaps me out of my musings about… _fish sticks? I thought I was thinking about toast?! _I shake my head, _stay focused Torch_, and hold the grate still, listening for the sound. Just when I think it's safe to start moving again someone bursts into the room. They slam the door shot and in two long strides cross the room to the table where Grei is tied.

Dark Ace.

I've never seen him in person before, but I recognize him from the Wanted posters around terra Scilar. He slams both his fists down on the table next to her and gets a stifled groan in response. Greison turns her head slightly and opens her eyes to look at him. They're so washed out they're almost gray, her eyes that is, and Dark Ace is glaring down at her with anger like I've never seen before.

"You…" His voice is low and dangerous, but Grei's expression doesn't move past 'vacant'. "You're driving me crazy! I see you everywhere! It's like you're a ghost, haunting me all the time, but you can't even wait until you're dead to do that can you?! If Master Cyclonis wasn't still toying with you, I swear I'd--"

"You'd what?" Her voice startles us both. It's quiet and obviously hasn't been used in a while, but it's there. "Kill me?" She closes her eyes and keeps talking. "If you can and you won't get in trouble for it then by all means, do. I've always wondered what it would be like to feel nothing." She opens her eyes to look at him again, this time with a glimmer of something that looks a lot like hope. "Maybe you could show me?"

Something foreign registers on the older man's face, and it pulls against all the lines of his usual expression. It looks like… fear?

He unsheathes his sword and in one fluid movement slices through the straps keeping Grei belted to the slab. "Get up." He orders. Greison sits up and swings her legs over the edge, hesitates for a moment, and hops down. The instant her feet hit the floor her legs give out and she collapses with a dull thud. Dark Ace smirks down at her, but when she doesn't get up his smile fades. I can't see her where she fell, the table's in the way, and I just barely resist the urge to blow the Dark Knight's brains out and drag Grei back to the Condor through the air vents.

I can't. that would go against the plan, and that's the one thing I can't do; I can't go against the plan.

I have to let Grei know what we're doing without alerting anyone else and then bring word back to Stork and the others. We're going to sneak in through a pipeline and get her out from there. They didn't give me the specifics for fear of shoving the most pertinent information out of my head. But before any of that can happen I have to make contact. That's the hard part, and it's not goin' so well.

Dark Ace stoops down, and when he comes back up he has her remaining arm around his neck and one of his own around her waist, holding her up. "Guess I'm not quite used to this whole 'walking' thing yet." Grei's voice sounds tired, but with every stumbling stride towards the door her step become a little steadier. _Wait… towards the door?! Where is he taking her?!_

The man holding my sister kicks the door open and they walk-slash-fall into the hallway. A gaggle of nameless Talons gape at the sight of them, and I have to admit, they do look strange.

Dark Ace is bent almost in half to accommodate for the size difference and Greison looks like she should've been six feet under two weeks ago. If she were human she might've been.

Needless to say the Talons scatter, with Dark Ace glaring daggers at their quickly receding backsides, leaving the hallway deserted. He turns her to the left and they begin making their way in that direction. As soon as they're out of my sight I push out the air grate cover and carefully set it on the counter below. I fly out the door and up into one of the shadowed crevasses that run along the ceilings. Watching the odd pair below me go slowly down the hall I frantically try to make a decision.

Struck by a sudden bout of judgment, I flick a switch on the tracker-transmitter belt Bobby built for me and flutter silently after the tormentor and the captive.

_From the way Dark Ace has been talking, it's hard to tell who's who._

* * *

The sudden blankness on Bobby's face is accompanied by a crackle of static from the Condor's overhead speaker system. We all watch him as he flips over the screen he's been using to keep track of Torch's location and checks the exposed wiring in the back. Then he wordlessly slides it across the table to Stork. Stork picks it up, takes one look at it, and lets his head fall to the table with a sudden bang that catches me off guard. "Oh… Torch!"

"What is it?" Piper asks, resting a concerned hand on his shoulder.

Bobby answers for him. "Torch decided to change the plan."

* * *

Oooh, Torch! If you ever get out of there alive you are gonna catch HELL form Piper! Please REVIEW and I promise, the next chapter won't take nearly as long (three months tops, school get out before then). Four hundred billion thanks to all of you for still reading, 'cause I know it's long and you all have better things to do, but you take the time to read it anyway!! LUVZ U ALL!!


	17. Memoria 2

_Yep, I still own Greison, Bobby, and Torch. Still don't own Storm Hawks though._

* * *

I didn't mean to let him take me anywhere far, I can sense Torch close by and I knew he must have had something in mind, but my body was so starved for movement and my mind was so starved for energy that I couldn't think straight for long enough to refuse. _Not that I really could've done anything if he had decided to take me anyway, I'm too weak to resist him. And I'm just so tired…_

The floor pretends to buckle under me as my knees threaten to give out again. I accidentally lean into Dark Ace when I stumble, and both of us freeze momentarily while I wait for him to shove me away, but he doesn't. He just adjusts to my sudden shift and we keep going. I vaguely wonder where we're headed, but I don't have enough readily available brainpower to take it any further than that. We lurch around a corner into another strangely deserted hallway with a single closed door on the far side. _I guess that's where we're going… _I finally decide that it's not worth the pain to walk any farther, even with Dark Ace's help. My legs try to collapse again and I let them, my arm sliding off his shoulders, and the rest of me falling forward and hitting the floor with a dull thud that I hear but don't actually feel. The nerves on that side of my body must still be regenerating. I see Torch fly halfway out of a crevasse in the ceiling, hesitate, and fly back.

Dark Ace leans over and checks to make sure I haven't just died on him. I blink at him and he half stands, nervously scanning the hall for possible onlookers. "There's no on here y'know, you scared them all off." I mean to sound sarcastic, but my voice comes out so soft and gravelly I'm surprised he even hears me at all.

He looks down at me and, with one more furtive glace everywhere but up, crouches down and scoops me up into his arms. Something seems to surprise him. "You're light."

"I'm short."

"You're light for being short."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Deal with it, there's nothing I can do to change my height."

"How tall you are isn't why you're light."

"Shut up." He kicks open the door and carries me into a circular room lined with thick metal cables connecting to a raised platform in the center. In a glass prism on the platform, a floating blue stone glows slightly. I recognize this place instantly. "…Memoria."

Dark Ace sets me down with my back against the platform and kneels in front of me so I have to meet his eyes. "You are doing a very good job of driving me insane, you know that, right?" I nod. _There's really nothing I can say to that. _"Good. I…" What I can hear of his voice trails off as my head droops to one side. He keeps one hand on my shoulder to support my neck but the other one goes up to brush the white hair out of my eyes. I never really thought about how strange I must look, but leaning against the black of his gloves, I realize how weird it is that I'm a seventeen-year-old girl who looks like a gray old lady.

I let out my breath, trying to focus on the quiet words floating in the air around me. I'm losing my ability to concentrate, which is really bad in here. I don't think he knows what this place does, but I still don't want him seeing the very dangerous things that go on in my head. I cut off whatever he's saying. I can see his lips moving and I know he must be saying something important from his expression, but I need to stay conscious and I don't know how much longer I can… "How old are you?"

He stops talking, obviously frustrated. "Were you listening to me at all?"

"Trying… I can't… It's getting harder to hear things… What did you say?"

He opens his mouth to say something, then seems to think better of it and says something else. "I'm twenty-nine." That's the last thing I hear. The last thing I see is him gently lowering my head to the floor so I don't crack it open on one of the raised metal chords.

_How she could just suddenly lose her hearing when I was saying something like that…_

I shake my head. It makes sense really. She's still recovering from the latest shock to her system and she's just done the most movement of any kind that she's had to in the past, what, three weeks? _It seems like longer._

A fluttering noise from above the doorway catches my attention, but before I can locate the source of the noise a different one distracts me. The crystal in its glass chamber begins to hum, turning slowly at first but picking up speed. Rings of blue light shoot out from the center in increasing frequencies until there's nothing left to see but an all-encompassing blue mist.

Then there's a sudden flash of white, and the mist is gone.

_Grass sways slightly in the light breeze that sweeps over the hillside. Two kids, one Merb and one a smaller version, if that was possible, of the girl who lays at my feet, are hoverboarding a little ways up a nearby hill. I look down, and Grei's not there. I can only see the bare outline of my legs and arms, but the rest of me is see-through._

"_Grei!" I look up. The Merb is the one speaking. "You're going too high!"_

"_Am not! I can still see that your fly is undone!" He quickly looks down to check and see if she's toying with him, and in the split second of his distraction she swings her board around and rockets down the hill, passing just an inch from where I would be standing if I were actually there._

_The ground shifts to keep up with her speed and I'm pulled along a few feet behind her. And then it all stops. Her board pitches forward and she falls to the ground with a small yelp of surprise. I look around to see what she hit, but there's nothing there. Her ears perk up and I hear the sound of muffled giggles from a bush a few feet away. "Freak!"_

_Grei sighs, picks up her board, and starts walking back up the hillside, calling back over her shoulder before she's out of earshot. "Nice shot with the Gravity Stone, Henrick."_

"_Thanks sis!"_

This can't be happening.

I hate this. _I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate having this guy inside _my_ sister's head looking at _my _sister's memories with nothing I can do to stop him without giving myself away. I hate this. _Dropping out of my hiding spot, careful to avoid coming in contact with any of the cables that would launch me into her mind, I fly over to Greison. She doesn't respond to my touch. I curse inside my head. If I were bigger I could carry her out of here. Dark Ace has already scared away every Talon who might have been able to stop me, and if I were big enough to carry her I could just walk out to the Condor and take her away. Damn it. I flick the communicator on my belt and whisper into it. "Bobby?"

His voice crackles over the airwaves. "Torch? What are you doing?! I thought that for once in your life you would be able to remember the plan, and then you go off into the middle of Cyclonia without telling anyone! What the heck happened!?"

"No no! I remembered the plan!"

"Then I repeat myself. Here, Stork wants to talk to you."

There's a staticky shuffling noise as the receiver changes hands. "Explanation please."

"I was about to go tell her the plan when Dark Ace showed up and took her to Memoria!" Silence. "For reals!"

Piper's voice comes next. I guess they decided to put me on the overhead sound system. "Where are you?"

"I'm in Memoria with her, I think she's unconscious. So far I haven't been sucked in, but it's only a matter of time before I run into something important! Please come!"

"Alright…"

"Torch?" Finn this time. "We have you on the tracker… thing, but you're right in the middle of Cyclonia! There's no way we could get in and out of there without getting busted!"

"Yes there is, just pop out of the grate in the floor we passed around the corner and walk right to the door."

"Uh, Torch?"

"Dark Ace scared everyone else off. I don't think he wanted any Talons following him."

There's a pause. "Whhhhy?"

"Dunno. He was saying something to her before he got pulled into her memories, but I wasn't close enough to hear what it was."

There's shuffling and some mumbling in the background, and then Aerrow comes on. "Torch? We're coming. Stork is gonna stay here in case something happens, then he can go get help."

"And Torch, Grei is way better at resisting the memory tap than you are." Bobby. He's the only one other than Stork who knows what the heck I'm talking about. "So even though she should be more vulnerable since she's out cold, but we can't risk Dark Ace finding out you're there before we can get you guys out. So Don't. Touch. Anything. Got it?"

"Got it." The air goes dead as they cut off their end of the signal. I glance up at Dark Ace, standing a short ways where I'm hovering. He's staring into the crystal, glassy-eyed, with his mouth slightly open. Even when he's totally out of touch with reality he's ready to fight, his fingertips just an inch from the handle of his blade. I really do not want to wake him up. Grei shifts a little in her sleep, drawing my attention from the impending doom above me. Her eyes are partway open, glowing green under her hooded lids. I wave one hand in front of her face to see if she'll notice, and just as my arm is on the downswing she moves again, causing me to overbalance and fall onto one of the metal cables next to her head. "Oh. Not good."

Junko punches through the grate in the ceiling as effortlessly as if it were made of paper. Bobby winces slightly as it clanks to the floor a few feet away. "Well let's hope Torch was right about no one being here, because if there is that sure gave us away." Junko shrugs sheepishly and the two of them start helping the rest of us up. Junko reluctantly crawls through the hole in the floor, and it takes both me and Finn to get him steady once we're all out, but Bobby manages to jump up and out and land on the floor without making a sound. Junko and Finn stare at him, openmouthed. He shrugs uncomfortably. "What?"

I shake my head and punch Finn on the shoulder. "Nothing. Come on, Torch said it'd be just around the corner."

We tiptoe around the bend in the hallway and I see a single door along the far wall with a pale blue glow seeping out from under the edge. I glance at Bobby and he nods. Aerrow catches the gesture and opens the door. Just as he's about to step through the giant lizard hooks two fingers through the back of his belt and jerks him backwards. Aerrow looks up, surprised, as he lets go. "What was that for?!"

"That." He points into the room and we look in. Greison is lying on her side next to a raised half-pillar in the center of the room, surrounded by what look like metal molehills coming up out of the ground. The Dark Ace is standing a few feet away from her, staring at the pulsating blue Memory Stone hovering in front of him. "This is Memoria. It's a chamber that, when synced with the Memory Stone, transports whoever is inside it into the memories of one of its occupants. This one doesn't look like it's finished yet; there aren't any harmonizing structures, so as long as no one touches the chords on the floor we should be fine." My gaze shifts to the molehills on the floor and I notice something everyone else seems to have overlooked. "But since it doesn't have any way of selecting a specific person whose memories to tap, if anyone touches the chords it'll automatically shift to the most present memory of the last person to come in contact with it. And if it does that_he's_ gonna notice."

_Oh dear._

"It depends on the memory, but as long as a new one isn't added, Memoria is programmed to shut off as soon as the memory ends. If we can get Grei out without knocking anyone inside we should have about a minute to get out before Memoria runs out of collected material and shuts down."

"What if someone else did get knocked in?"

"I don't know. I didn't build it, just let Grei kick the idea around me while she designed it originally."

Finn shrugs. "Okay then, just don't let Junko or me near it and we should be fine as far as no one else getting sucked in goes."

"It's a little late for that."

The boys look at me quizzically and I point to the small figure laying at an odd angle next to Grei, wings folded partway back and sticking into the air. Bobby smacks a hand over his eyes. "Torch."

_The scene changes as the grass melts away and the open sky dulls to slate gray rock. I stand on the same rock, sanded tile-smooth, behind a dashboard covered in various knobs, levers, and switches. A kid, who can't be any older than five, stands on a metal chair beside me, watching eagerly as the crystal beams and sparks of pure energy he's controlling through the board weave together and begin to solidify. His hand hovers above a blue switch and the thing he's making begins to glow green through the layer of heavy-duty bomber glass it's behind, reflecting strangely in the multi-faceted red goggles he's wearing._

_Just as the light becomes absolutely blinding and I'm not sure how the kid can still be looking straight at it a door behind us opens and Greison walks in. The slight noise startles him and his hand jumps down to the blue key. "NO!" He gives a short cry as green object flickers out and sinks suddenly before bursting out in a supernova effect that shatters the glass and sends it rocketing outwards._

_Grei jumps forward and knocks him down behind the dashboard as the shards fly over their heads through my translucent body and impale themselves deep in the rock walls. Grei sits up, the boy cradled in her lap, and smacks him upside his spiky, brown-haired head. "What the heck are you doin', Torch?! Most people's suicide attempts are a little less destructive!"_ Suicide?_ I know she's exaggerating, but for some reason it bothers me to hear her say it. "I know you don't like having me gone all the time, but I need you to take care of Bobby for me!"_

"_I wasn't… doing that. I just wanted to try something, and I wasn't being as… careful as I should."_

"_Not careful my foot! Come on Torch, you're not even wearing your helmet! You don't hardly leave the tunnels without that on, and you're telling me you just forgot it in your_ _explosives__ lab?!" _

"…_If I said yes, would you believe me?"_

"_No."_

"_Dang it."_

"_What were you making anyway?"_

"_Concussion bullets. If you do them right, they're supposed explode once on contact, then re-solidify whatever matter's directly surrounding them, then explode again."_

"_Cool."_

"_Yep. And see, I had everything right, I made sure!" The kid, Torch I guess, extends a pair of freakin'_ wings_ and zips over to one side of the room, to a chalkboard that, like everything else in the room, is covered in bits of three-inch-thick glass. "See?" He sounds almost desperate for her approval, and hopeful that she'll quit staring at him like he just got caught doing something really dirty. "Please?" His voice comes out as no more than a squeak and his hover drops about a foot so he can see eye to eye with her._

_Her stolid frown falters and she bursts into a crazed laugh as she practically tackles him into a hug. "I hear ya Torch, sorry I freaked out. I just worry about you guys when I'm gone, and enough of it is completely pointless that I don't need you trying to kill yourself on top of everything else. Just, please be careful, okay?"_

"_Okay." Comes the strangled reply from in her arms. She smiles and lets him go, where he falls to the stone floor in a heap, gasping for breath._

Dark Ace shifts and the blue glow of the Memory Stone fades slightly, the mist that filled the room before dissipating into thin air. He blinks and on the ground Torch sits up, rubbing his forehead like he just got smacked across the face with a two-by-four. Grei stirs from her position on the floor without opening her eyes, drawing Dark Ace's attention, and the first thing he notices is the bug-boy sitting next to his captive. Surprise races over his features, closely followed by anger, his hand jumping to his sword and releasing it from its sheath in an instant. "_You._" He snarls. _Uh oh. Not good. _My hands fly to my crossbow, but Bobby's even faster, a length of chain whipping past my head and curling around Torch's legs before anyone can even blink. Then several things happen at once.

Dark Ace takes one step forward, the toe of his shoe scuffing the metal chord Torch and Greison are on and setting off a shower of blue sparks. Torch tries to jerk up and fly away at the same moment Bobby pulls back to reel him in, and the conflicting motions cause the chain to grate against the chord before the blue raptor's superior strength takes effect and he flies toward the door. The sparks dance up the chain and Bobby overbalances slightly, Piper reaching out to steady him. The next second the Memory Stone is glowing again and all three of them are in a heap on the floor, tangled in the chain, with tiny bits of blue lightning racing all over their skin and-or scales and-or wings.

The room is filled with blue mist again and Dark Ace is frozen, his face impassive once more. "Uh…" I glance up at Aerrow and Junko, who both _look_ just as confused as I _feel_. "What just happened?"

_I look down at my hands, or rather, where my hands should be, and when I don't see anything but their bare outline I know exactly where I am._ Memoria. _"The sparks must have traveled up the chain and into my mind when I touched Bobby, and I'm experiencing the temporary effects of the machine! Then, according to Bobby, I'll be transported out of here as soon as the memory is over." I say it to no one in particular, and when I realize I'm talking to myself I shake my head and decide to try to figure out whose head I'm in._

_I'm standing on the deck of the Condor, but it looks newer, with less of the patch jobs Junko throws together when we don't have the correct parts, and when I look up there's a blue-haired human driving it instead of my Stork. I smile for a moment, holding the thought close._ My_ Stork. The pilot waves and for a startled moment I think he's waving at me. Until the boy standing next to me waves back._

_He's wearing a blue Storm Hawks uniform and has black hair and violently red eyes. Violently red, but not… violent. He can't be more than fifteen years old. He's smiling happily, but when a red-haired Storm Hawk comes up and claps him on the back he stops waving and his smile falters. "You ready to fight, Ecklan?" Ecklan nods, his smile vanishing completely as the older man's grows. "This is it, the final battle. Master Cyclonis himself has been defeated, and all that left is to clean up some loose ends." He gestures out to the sky in front of the Condor to the Cyclonian fleet awaiting its final stand._

_The two of them turn and head into the hanger bay, my non-body sliding effortlessly after them. There are other Storm Hawks there, and I almost recognize them, but then the memory speeds up. Things are happening too fast for me to understand them all. I see skimmers and crusers falling and I can't tell whose side they're from. The only thing constant is the boy, riding on the red-haired man's skimmer, taking over whenever he jumps off and scooting to the side as soon as he lands again. Then the memory slows back to realtime and I'm surrounded by smoke._

_The boy is driving this time, and an older boy, in a Cyclonian uniform and with spiked dark purple hair, lands on the nose of the skimmer. He's probably nineteen. He hisses out a message, barely audible over the sounds of the surrounding fight. "Do it. You need to kill the Sky Knight soon, or the tide won't turn and it won't matter who dies."_

_Ecklan solidly meets his gaze. "I know. I have to, and I know. But if I can't-"_

"You have to_." Comes the snarled response. "You're the only one close enough. Just remember what he did."_

"_Yes sir, Snipe." With a satisfied nod, young Snipe jumps off the ride and onto a waiting heliscooter, diving away before anyone sees the two of them together. Ecklan banks to the side and catches the red haired Sky Knight in the pilot's seat. The Knight laughs at the smoking skimmer he just cut down and glances over his shoulder at his young companion._

"_Why so glum Ecklan? Not getting as many scumbags as you want today?"_

_Ecklan angrily mutters something under his breath that I can only hear because he can. "Actually, I only want_ _one__." And with that he jumps out of the copilot's seat and unsheathes the giant butcher-knife long sword from his back. It glows a sickly blue against the red clouds above him, both reflected in the Sky Knight's shocked gaze. An almost happy grimace curls onto his face as he exhales his reason. "For my family."_

_I squeeze my eyes shut, but from the rushing in my ears I know the memory is picking up speed again._

"_Why did you do it?" Peeking through my fingers I see that I'm in a dark, red-stone room, and Ecklan is being interrogated by a familiar looking black-haired violet-eyed four-year-old. He shrugs, staring out the window into the Cyclonian sky. "Tell me!" She demands, not royally but still expecting to be answered._

"_I had to. It was the only way to get him back, make him pay for what he had done. The Atmosian High Council never would have done anything, no matter how many times I brought it before them, and he had to suffer the consequences for what he did to my family."_

"_What did he do?"_

"_He destroyed my Terra, thinking it was a Cyclonian outpost, without even finding out who was on it, never thinking that he might be wrong, that there might be a few neutral Terras left in this war. He killed my family, my friends, everyone I knew and cared about. I was lucky to get out alive. I wouldn't have, except my dad forced me to go on without them."_

_The girl starts messing with his sleeve and he tugs it gently from her grasp without looking at her. She frowns at him. "Is that how you hurt your arm?"_

"_Yes. I don't know what I'm going to do about it now without Jei to help me out."_

"_Jei?"_

"_He was the Storm Hawks pilot. They were my friends. They cared that I was still alive."_

_The young Master Cyclonis looks confused. "They're dead too you know."_

"_Yes. I know. I killed their Sky Knight; they had to fall in turn."_

"_Was it worth it?"_

_Ecklan gets up and walks out of the room past me and I can see his left arm hanging limply by his side. "No." He says, more to himself than her. "It never was. I never expected it to be." And he leaves, my head spinning as the world dissolves around me._

_

* * *

Had to fix it because it was buggin' be something terrible that the story wasn't going in order.  
And you don't care.  
Right._

_So yeah. Dark Ace. For reals. I named him Ecklan pronounced 'eh klahn', after the French word "éclat" pronounced 'ay klaá ', which means "success" in English, but literally translates out to "splinter" or "fragment." It seemed fitting. And the French version showed up in the options for my spell check when I typed 'ace' in backwards. I do things like that sometimes for name ideas, and what'd'ya know, it works!_

_Love you all, --Dotskip._

ss  
\--/)


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